BUBBLE ZONE LAWS | POLICING BLACK LIVES | FEMINIST THEATRE

Spring 2018 | Vol. 32 No. 1

WOMEN’S NEWS & FEMINIST VIEWS

Singer-SongwriterLIDO PIMIENTA Combines Love and Absolute Rage

$6.75 PLUS AND CAD/USD Alanis Obomsawin’s Sharon Batt on Breast

Publications Mail Agreement Latest Film Cancer Activism No. 40008866

Each and every day, the women of Unifor are building and resisting in the streets, at the ballot box, at the bargaining table and with collective action. Activism makes a difference.

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Unifor Full Spring-18.indd 1 2018-04-10 3:15 PM SPRING 2018 | VOLUME 32 NO. 1 news BUBBLE ZONES EXPANDED ...... 6 by Barbara D. Janusz

ABORTION PILL RULES RELAXED ...... 7 by Elizabeth Whitten 11 MEMORABILIA: PUSSY POWER UNLEASHED . . . 10 by Renée Bondy ABBY LIPPMAN REMEMBERED ...... 11 features by Anne Rochon Ford LIDO PIMIENTA ...... 16 TUNISIAN STUDENTS MARK #METOO VICTORY . . 12 Polaris Music Prize-winning artist combines love with by Tharwa Boulifi absolute rage by Evelyn C. White AFGHAN MEDIA WOMEN FOCUS OF FILM . . . . 13 by Vivien Felligi MISOGYNOIR IN CANADA ...... 21 Robyn Maynard documents the surveillance of Black KOREAN SEX SLAVES DEMAND APOLOGY . . . . 14 lives in Canada in her new book Policing Black Lives: by Amanda Le Rougetel State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. by Cheryl Thompson

UPSTAGING PATRIARCHY ...... 24 Theatre Companies in Canada are tearing down gender and race barriers, and in doing so, are helping to create a more diverse, wide-ranging exploration of Canadian culture. by Andi Schwartz

ALANIS OBOMSAWIN ...... 29 Legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has released her 50th film,Our People Will Heal, which movingly tells a beautiful story about a journey to reclaim lost history, language and traditions of self-determination. by Doreen Nicoll

21 24

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 1 arts & ideas MAGAZINE INK FABULOUS FEMALE COMEDY ...... 32 MANAGING EDITOR: Penni Mitchell FULFILLMENT AND OFFICE MANAGER: Phil Koch Tig Notario and Diablo ACCOUNTANT: Sharon Pchajek Cody’s One Mississippi, BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Ghislaine Alleyne, Phil Koch, the visceral and original Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhard, Valerie Regehr and Issa Rae’s Web Therapy EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Ghislaine Alleyne, Gio Guzzi, Insecure are among the latest Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhard crop of female-driven ADVERTISING SALES: Penni Mitchell (204) 774-6225 comedies on TV. DESIGN: inkubator .ca by Maureen Medved RETAIL INQUIRIES: Disticor (905) 619-6565 PROOFREADER: Phil Koch MUSIC REVIEW ...... 34 COVER PHOTO: Ruthie Titus Safe Haven by Ruth B Review by Evelyn C. White NOTE TO LIBRARIES: This Spring 2018 issue of Herizons, Vol .32 No .1, follows the Winter 2018 issue of Herizons, Vol . 31 No 3 . SPRING READING ...... 34 Therefore, there will not be a Vol . 31 No . 4 issue of Herizons . The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes by Brigit Canning; HERIZONS is published four times per year by HERIZONS Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson; In Many Waters Magazine Inc . in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada . One-year by Amy Sands Brodoff; Bad Mothers: Regulations, subscription price: $27 .14 plus $1 36. GST = $28 .50 in Canada . Representations and Resistance edited by M. Hughes Subscriptions to U .S . add $6 . International subscriptions add $8 . Cheques are payable to: HERIZONS, PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB, Miller, T. Hager and R. Jameko Bromwich; Claiming Canada R3C 2G1 . Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit by Toll Free 1-888-408-0028 . Lynn Gehl; Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and edited by Samhita SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES: subscriptions@herizons .ca Revolution in Trump’s America EDITORIAL INQUIRIES: editor@herizons .ca Mukhopadhyay; Manufacturing Urgency: The ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: editor@herizons ca. Development Industry and Violence Against Women WEBSITE: www .herizons .ca by Corinne L. Mason; Fairly Equal: Lawyering the HERIZONS is indexed in the Canadian Periodical Index and heard Feminist Revolution by Linda Silver Dranoff; Runaway on Voiceprint . HERIZONS is a member of the Manitoba Magazine Wives and Rogue Feminists: The Origins of the Women’s Publishers Association . Shelter Movement in Canada by Margo Goodhand; GST #R131089187 . ISSN 0711-7485 . I’m the Girl Who Was Raped by Michelle Hattingh. The purpose of HERIZONS is to empower women; to inspire hope and foster a state of wellness that enriches women’s lives; BIG PHARMA AND BREAST CANCER ...... 43 to build awareness of issues as they affect women; to promote the strength, wisdom and creativity of women; to broaden the Long-time health activist Sharon Batt is the author boundaries of feminism to include building coalitions and support of a new book, Health Advocacy Inc., which examines among other marginalized people; to foster peace and ecological how corporate cash has depoliticize women’s health awareness; and to expand the influence of feminist principles in advocacy work in Canada. the world . HERIZONS aims to reflect a feminist philosophy that is diverse, understandable and relevant to women’s daily lives . by Deborah Ostrovsky Views expressed in HERIZONS are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect HERIZONS’ editorial policy . No material may be reprinted without permission . Due to limited resources, HERIZONS does not accept poetry or fiction submissions . columns Funded by the Government of Canada With the generous support of SUSAN G. COLE ...... 5 the Manitoba Arts Council . We’re Not Backing Down Publications Mail Agreement No . 40008866 . Return Undeliverable Addresses to: PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3C 2G1 . JOANNA CHIU ...... 15 Email: subscriptions@herizons .ca Support and Solidarity Empower Us Herizons is printed with union labour at Sun Media, Commercial LYN COCKBURN ...... 48 Print, Winnipeg, on Forest #MeToo Brings Out #MeanToo Stewardship Council-certified paper .

2 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS contributors

MANJEET BIRK RENÉE BONDY Manjeet Birk is a PhD candidate Renée Bondy is a historian, writer in education at the University of and educator whose writing on British Columbia and a regular contemporary feminist themes book reviewer for Herizons . With has appeared in Herizons and a lifetime of experience organizing, troubling, and Bitch . Renée teaches in the women’s studies challenging systems, Manjeet is always on the program at the University of Windsor . She writes lookout for new ways to conceptualize a more regularly on little-known nuggets about women’s beautiful world . history for Herizons .

DEBRA HURON NIRANJANA IYER Debra Huron is a writer and Niranjana Iyer is a freelance editor who lives and works writer who specializes in near the shores of the Kitchi writing literary book reviews for Sibi (Great River) on unceded Herizons . Niranjana’s work has Algonquin territory in the capital city of the appeared in This magazine and on Rabble .ca and Canadian state . Her review of Lynn Gehl’s book Bookslut . You can check out her blog at niranjana . Claiming Anishinaabe appears in this issue . wordpress .com .

PENNEY KOME ANDI SCHWARTZ Journalist and author Penney Andi Schwartz is a Toronto Kome is the author of six non-fic- freelance writer whose writing tion books including The Taking of regularly appears in the queer Twenty-Eight: Women Challenge publication Xtra . She is a gradu- the Constitution (1983), an account of the constitu- ate student in the gender, feminist and women’s tional conference that led to the strengthening of studies program at York University . Andi writes Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms . In this on feminist theatre in Canada for this edition issue, she reviews Linda Silver Dranoff’s book on of Herizons . family law Fairly Equal .

CHERYL THOMPSON EVELYN C. WHITE Cheryl Thompson has a PhD Evelyn C . White is the author of in communication studies Alice Walker: A Life and Every from McGill University . She is Goodbye Ain’t Gone: A Photo currently a Banting postdoctoral Narrative of Black Heritage on fellow at the University of Toronto, where she Salt Spring Island. A regular Herizons con- teaches visual culture, Black Canadian studies tributor she lives in Halifax . Evelyn interviewed and advertising and media . Cheryl’s article on Polaris Music Prize-winner Lido Pimienta for poet Aisha Sasha John appears in this issue . this issue .

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WE’RE NOT BACKING DOWN

I still cannot believe what’s happening: As I write, there when NDP MP Margaret Mitchell rose in the House are news stories daily about bad sexual behaviour on the of Commons to seek an explanation she was mercilessly part of men in power, whether in business, politics or mocked by MPs and members of the press gallery. The the arts. And the women reporting this behaviour are message? That’s how it is, and we like it that way. being believed. Earlier this year, a woman calling herself Grace wrote The #MeToo movement means business—but it’s no a story on on babe.net in which she described a bad date longer sexual business as usual. It’s tempting to focus on with comedian Aziz Ansari. She claimed that Ansari the easier targets—the more monstrous behaviour involv- invited her to his apartment, plied her with alcohol and, ing Harvey Weinstein or Fox News’s Roger Ailes—men even as she tried to slow him down and gave off every no who likely broke laws or violated civil codes. If, as a result signal she could, behaved the way men often do in these of their actions, they no longer have the careers and power situations. Pursue. Grope. Grab. Repeat. they once enjoyed, we can feel a sense of justice. Ansari may not have violated sexual assault law in his But if #MeToo goes deeper and challenges everyday extended, very clumsy and aggressive attempt to get laid. sexual norms—instead of only flagrant, violent abuses of Grace said he behaved like a “horny teenager” and said power—then it can change the world. that by the time she left she felt as if she’d been assaulted. Patrick Brown was forced to step down as leader of What she experienced happens to girls and women every Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party after two women day in a rape culture. accused him of sexual misconduct. Brown, then an MP, This is a culture in which making a pass is referred to reportedly pursued the young women and, in doing so, as being “hit on.” The language of sexual intercourse is abused his power. imbued with violence (women get “banged” or “nailed”) Brown denied the claims and plans to sue CTV, which and this is one reason why so many men have trouble broke the story, for libel. He also asked why, if what he distinguishing between sex and sexual assault. did was wrong, the women didn’t go to police. Many people believe it’s a mistake to blur the line The answer is that, if what the women described did between sexual assault and everyday sexual behaviour. I happen, Brown may not have broken the law. However, disagree. Women will be safer when everyday sexual if he behaved badly, he should still be held accountable. behaviour changes. I don’t think men should be charged And what Brown is accused of is simply what many men if they hit on someone or move too fast. But right now do: They use their position to leverage sex with much women are challenging rape culture, and men will have younger women. to question just about everything they say and do with This, we need to emphasize, is the norm, and it has regard to the dating dance. What we’re calling for is a been for decades. In a powerful piece in the Globe and major reset: no assumptions that one thing automatically Mail, Carole Off recalled going to Ottawa to work as leads to another; more direct conversation. The good a reporter in the late 1980s. Brian Mulroney’s press thing about all this is that better communication makes secretary, Michel Gratton, had been accused by at least for more meaningful connection—which can never be a two female reporters of sexually abusive behaviour, and bad thing. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 5 nelliegrams Bubble Zones Expanded FRANCE TAKES ON by BARBARA D. JANUSZ STREET HARASSMENT The govern- ment of French President Emmanuel Macron plans to introduce a bill that will make street harassment an offence punish- able by fines of up to $500 Cdn . Women in France report that sexual aggression towards them, especially in public places, is common and severe . Groping on public transportation is common, and many women report being followed, insulted, threatened and subjected to lewd sexual gestures . Marlene Schiappa, French minister for gender equality (above), is heading the campaign against sexual harassment in the country’s streets . A report by a parliamentary In Canadian jurisdictions where bubble zone laws apply, anti-abortion protesters must keep a distance of 50 metres from abortion clinics. (Photo: St. John’s Telegram, Joe Gibbons/CP) working group recommended that men who make obscene comments For Joyce Arthur, the January 28, 1988, After a sniper shot Dr. Garson or gestures to women in public, Supreme Court of Canada decision Romalis in his West Vancouver home in intentionally block their path, follow them or contact them in a sexual that laid to rest the controversy over 1994, the British Columbia legislature manner should be subject to fines . abortion couldn’t have come sooner. enacted the Access to Abortion Services Street harassment, Schiappa said, Only months earlier, Arthur had Act. The groundbreaking law, the first of infringes on “the freedom of move- endured the humiliating ordeal of its kind in Canada, came to be known as ment of women in public spaces and securing a certificate from a hospi- the “bubble zone” law. Today, a growing undermines self-esteem and the tal therapeutic abortion committee number of provinces are passing bubble right to security .” attesting that the continuation of her zone laws. Bonus: Macron has also vowed pregnancy would likely have endan- Bubble zone laws restrict protests to tackle pay inequality in French gered her life or health. from specified zones around clinics to workplaces . Thirty years on, therapeutic abortion protect patients and staff from harass- committees are a thing of a past, and ment. Filming or videotaping outside ACTORS surgical abortions are more widely facilities is also prohibited under such SCRIPT available in Canada. However, women laws, and protection extends to health HARASSMENT seeking abortions are still challenged care providers’ homes. The penalty for a FINALE on a regular basis by anti-abortion pro- first offence under the B.C. law is a fine A symposium testers outside abortion clinics. Their of $2,000, six months in jail, or both. organized by shouts, insults and taunts to patients In October 2017, Ontario’s bubble a group co-founded by Canadian and clinic staff are often amplified by zone law was passed overwhelmingly actor Mia Kirshner made several grotesque, enlarged photos of bloodied by Liberal, Conservative and NDP recommendations to address sexual lifeless fetuses emblazoned on sand- legislators. The law creates 50-metre violence in the Canadian film and wich board pickets. zones outside abortion clinics and entertainment industry and in society Arthur, who today is the executive dir- prohibits protesters from targeting as a whole . A report published after the two- ector of the Abortion Rights Coalition the homes of clinic staff. In Ottawa, day December AfterMeToo event of Canada, sees taking on anti-choice the zone covers all of Bank Street calls for like the creation of an harassment at clinics as the new abor- between Sparks and Queen streets. independent, national organization tion battlefront. While the Supreme In November 2017, Newfoundland to address sexual violence in the Court made it clear that abortion is legal, and Labrador enacted a bubble zone entertainment industry . Delegates and Ottawa has ensured that abortion is law and in December 2017, Quebec called for the organization to inves- an insured medical procedure, anti-abor- followed suit. tigate historical cases, as well as tion groups still intimidate both women Most recently, the NDP government create protocols on sexual harass- seeking abortions and the medical staff in Alberta tabled its bubble zone bill in ment . The AfterMeToo report also who work at abortion facilities—some- April 2018. It is intended to keep pro- called for increased public funding times at their homes. testers 50 metres from abortion clinics.

6 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS The law will also prohibit protestors Prasad said. “Some women believe their nelliegrams from taking photos or videos. Bill image could be caught on news footage 9, the Protecting Choice for Women if there is a protest outside a clinic, and to help sexual assault service pro- Accessing Health Care Act, would that they will be recognized by people viders deal with the increased need bring Alberta in line with other bubble watching the evening news.” for counselling services that has zone provinces. Bubble zones can also prevent dem- resulted because of the #MeToo Celia Posyniak, executive director of onstrations at doctors’ offices and at movement . the Calgary Kensington Abortion Clinic, pharmacies where the abortion- The group hopes to raise $7 mil- says a bubble zone law is needed because inducing drug Mifegymiso, initially lion this year . Funds will be used to provide counselling and legal court injunctions are ineffective. She known as RU-486, is prescribed and supports to victims of sexual assault obtained an injunction for the Kensington distributed. Mifegymiso is prescribed and harassment . The group aims Clinic that prohibits four or more people in Canada to terminate pregnancies up to combat rape culture by helping from convening across the street from the to a nine-week limit. to develop legislative changes, as facility. She also obtained an injunction to While anti-abortion groups have well as by pushing for workplace protect her privacy at home. reportedly considered a legal challenge to policies to curb sexual misconduct “Our injunction at the clinic is bubble zone laws, University of Alberta in the screen industry and in all violated on a regular basis,” explained law professor Erin Nelson believes a workplaces . Posyniak. “We call the police, who read challenge would not likely succeed. out the order to the group of more than “People who are protesting in front FOUNDATION TO four individuals. They disperse, but as of a clinic are doing so specifically ADMINISTER SEXUAL soon as the police leave, they recon- because they want to interfere with VIOLENCE FUND vene.” One protestor was charged with women’s right to access those services Following the December violating the injunction, according to in some fashion—either by intimidat- AfterMeToo conference in Toronto, Posyniak, and was fined for contempt ing them, or preventing them from the Canadian Women’s Foundation of court. getting in,” said Nelson, who is also (CWF) and the newly formed “We had costs awarded against him, the chair of the university’s Health anti-violence initiative AfterMeToo but he never paid,” Posyniak said. Law Institute. announced that the CWF will Kensington Clinic staff must advise Nelson adds that customers at phar- administer the newly established clients to enter through the secure macies would likely not tolerate any AfterMeToo fund . parking lot behind the building in order interference by anti-abortion protest- The fund is designed to help to avoid harassment. ors. “People go to pharmacies for many cover counselling and other expenses involved in sexual Sandeep Prasad, executive director of reasons that are unrelated to medically harassment and assault cases . Action Canada for Sexual Health and reproductive issues.” This will include fees for living Rights, fields calls from women who want In the coming months, women living expenses for complainants involved to ensure their privacy isn’t violated. in provinces without bubble zones are in a complaint process involving “It’s intimidating if you haven’t had expected to lobby for legislation to pro- sexual harassment or assault . The those experiences before, particularly for tect their privacy and to help safeguard AfterMeToo fund will help existing women who live in rural communities,” their right to abortion.  groups meet the increased demand for sexual assault counselling, and help with costs associated with accompanying complainants to court and medical appointments . Abortion Pill Rules Relaxed Author Margaret Atwood has by ELIZABETH WHITTEN vowed to make a significant con- tribution to the fund, as has author Abortion advocates in Canada wel- Susan Swan . You can donate to the fund at aftermetoo .com . comed Health Canada’s November 2017 relaxation of rules regarding the SENATOR abortion-inducing drug Mifegymiso. TAKES ON Mifegymiso (pronounced MIFY- HARASSMENT guy-ME-so) is a combination of two Independent medications. Mifepristone, the first Senator Marilou pill taken, blocks the effects of pro- McPhedran is gesterone, while misoprostol, taken 24 encouraging former and current to 48 hours later, causes the uterus to Senate staffers who have been sexu- expel its contents. ally harassed to come forward and Approved by Health Canada in July receive free legal advice . 2015, the drug became available in In February, the Manitoba January 2017 with strict regulations. Mifegymiso can now be prescribed to terminate senator set up a confidential Initially, Mifegymiso could only be pregnancies up to nine weeks. email address that can be used

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 7 nelliegrams prescribed up to the seventh week of committed to pay for the drug. This pregnancy; that has now been extended means that, for many women, it may to contact McPhedran at confi- to the ninth week. Doctors no longer be more affordable to obtain a surgical dential@mariloumcphedran .com . have to take a six-hour online course on abortion than to take Mifegymiso. The McPhedran, a human rights lawyer the drug and patients no longer have to drug is also covered under the federal and an expert on sexual harassment, sign a consent form. government’s non-insured health will use part of her Senate budget Previously, the rules were cumbersome. benefits program. to cover the costs of independent A doctor would prescribe and order the In Canada, abortion services are legal advice on harassment cases medication, and then distribute it to the typically available in cities and women involving Canada’s Red Chamber . patient at their office. Doctors were also in rural areas often have to travel several Senators’ office budgets are required to observe the patient taking hours to obtain surgical abortions. typically used to pay for research or the first pill. temporary staff . Mifegymiso is expected to improve Asked if she believes there is a “It really inhibited doctors from access for women in rural areas. Given culture of harassment in the Senate, wanting to prescribe it, because of the the choice, many patients would prefer McPhedran replied, “Of course I do .” logistics [and] the general weirdness of to take Mifegymiso than to have a The Senator’s offer is not limited it. So this makes it more normal, like surgical abortion. to those harassed by senators, but other drugs,” said Joyce Arthur, exec- “It’s considered to be sort of a more is open to anyone who has faced utive director of the Abortion Rights private process,” Arthur explains. “[A harassment in the “Senate environ- Coalition of Canada. woman] might feel she has more control ment .” To qualify, the misconduct Under the new regulations, women over the process if she’s at home.” must have occurred between 2006 seeking an early termination obtain a “Pharmacists and doctors who are and the present . prescription dispensed at a pharmacy. signing up to prescribe and dispense McPhedran was appointed to Patients are required to obtain an it are obviously pro-choice, so there’s the Senate by Prime Minister Justin ultrasound to determine the gestational less need to worry about running into Trudeau in 2016 . Two Canadian sena- range of the pregnancy and to ensure anti-choice doctors who are going to tors, Don Meredith and Colin Kenny, they don’t have an ectopic pregnancy. refuse,” she pointed out. Nor do women resigned in 2017 following allega- As Arthur notes, many clinics don’t have to face protestors outside of clinics. tions of sexual impropriety . Both are have an ultrasound machine, which can Doctors can direct patients to a phar- eligible for full pensions . cause delays. macy that carries the drug so they can The Mifegymiso kit costs about avoid having to search for a pharmacy FIRST $300. The provinces of Nova Scotia, on their own. WOMAN TO HEAD RCMP New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Arthur wants the medication to be Alberta, and British Columbia have universally funded across Canada. She Brenda Lucki, the first woman to announced that they will cover the also says there is a need to motivate head the RCMP, medication under their provincial physicians and pharmacists to prescribe has vowed to deal with workplace health programs. However, the gov- and dispense Mifegymiso, and for it bullying, harassment and racial ernments of Saskatchewan, Manitoba to be taught as part of medical school discrimination within Canada’s and Prince Edward Island will offer training. Arthur also believes that other federal police agency . The 31-year only partial coverage. Newfoundland health practitioners, such as nurses and veteran has promised to “challenge and Labrador, the Yukon, Northwest midwives, should be allowed to pre- assumptions, seek explanations” Territories and Nunavut have not scribe Mifegymiso.  until she “unearth[s] the issues that need addressing .” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Lucki will “play a vital role in advanc- ing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, promoting gender equality and equity, supporting mental well- ness across the RCMP .” Lucki has contributed to United Nations missions in the former Yugoslavia and Haiti, and received commendation for her efforts to improve relations with First Nations in northern Manitoba . Laurie M. Anderson, B.A., LL.B. Barrister and Solicitor FEDS GETS TOUGH 450, 340 12 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB T2R 1L5 ON ASSAULT Phone: (403) 232-0848 Canada’s Criminal Code provi- E-Mail: [email protected] sions on domestic violence will www.calgaryfamilylawassociates.com be expanded include assault by

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HERIZONS SPRING 2018 9 nelliegrams memorabilia dating partners . The provisions are in Bill C-75, an omnibus bill introduced March 31 that aims at to unclog courtrooms . The word Pussy Power Unleashed “intimate partner” will be included in the domestic assault provisions by RENÉE BONDY in addition to spouse, a move that reflects the fact that half of all A friend of mine has a intimate violence involves current T-shirt that reads, “4 out or former dating partners who are of 5 cats prefer lesbians.” not cohabitating . She receives a lot of The federal government bill, if positive comments about passed by Parliament, will also it, mostly from other place a reverse onus on intimate ailurophiles—people partners or spouses who have been previously convicted of with a love of cats. While violence against a current or former her T-shirt plays into a spouse, common-law partner or stereotype, it also draws dating partner . As a result, those attention to historical and charged more than once will have contemporary associ- to convince the court that an ations between women offender should be released on bail, and felines, many of rather than placing the onus on the which have specifically From theologian Julian of Norwich to Eartha Kitt, seen above as Crown to convince the court that gendered references and TV’s Catwoman in 1968, women have a long association with all an offender should not be released . political overtones. things feline. The bill will also pave the way for The word “pussy” has higher maximum sentences for long been considered a derogatory term The associations are endless. The repeat offenders . for women’s genitalia and a derogatory feminist group Hollaback has taken According to domestic violence term for gay and genderqueer men. In on street harassment, which used to be expert and University of Ottawa law spite of its sometimes vulgar conno- derisively known as catcalling. The name professor Elizabeth Sheehy, the bill tations, the word has been reclaimed of the Russian all-woman punk band “has the potential to enhance the by feminists, thanks, in part to U.S. Pussy Riot was also chosen as a show of safety of victims and to increase their President Donald Trump. The rec- feminist power. The global outcry over trust in the criminal-justice system .” lamation began in January 2017 when the 2012 conviction and imprisonment shortages of pink wool were reported MORE WOMEN REPORT RAPE of Pussy Riot members on charges of as a result of the knitting and sewing of Police across Canada are dealing hooliganism for staging guerrilla theatre pink pussy hats worn by protesters at the with an avalanche of reported rape performances drew attention to govern- cases since the #MeToo movement Women’s March on Washington. The ment corruption and to the oppression gained momentum in late 2017 . protest attracted 500,000 people and mil- of women and the LGBTQ commun- The Winnipeg sexual crimes lions more attended sympathy marches ity under Russian President Vladimir division reports that it was han- around the world where crowds were Putin’s regime. dling more than 370 investigations dotted with bright pink pussy hats—the Twenty-first-century feminists’ rec- in early 2018, whereas in all of brainchild of American activists Krista lamation of the word pussy is just the 2017 it handled 505 . The number Suh and Jayna Zweiman. In reaction to latest connection between women and of Winnipeg rape reports doubled Trump’s admission that he sometimes cats. Historian Jacqueline Murray notes during the last quarter of 2017, fol- “grab[ed women] by the pussy,” Suh that cats came to be associated with lowing the publicity surrounding the and Zweiman urged women to reclaim women’s domain in the Middle Ages. multiple allegations of sexual assault the pussy as a symbol of feminist unity, This was especially evident in Medieval against Hollywood producer Harvey strength and opposition to misogyny. Europe, when domesticated cats were Weinstein . Ottawa’s Rape Crisis commonly kept as mousers. Anchorites, Centre reported a doubling in the monastic women who lived hermetic number of reports of sexual assault over the last year . lives in tiny cells attached to churches, routinely kept cats. The theologian WIN FOR VULNERABLE Julian of Norwich, perhaps the most PATIENTS famous anchorite, is often depicted Ontario’s Divisional Court has with a cat. Although cats served the upheld the requirement that essential task of controlling vermin, physicians who conscientiously The theologian Julian of Norwich, perhaps the most they also provided much needed com- object to a medical procedure, such famous anchorite, is often depicted with a cat. panionship for women whose ascetic

10 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS existence permitted almost no contact relationships with younger men—have nelliegrams with the outside world. been maligned in pop culture. Cougars In the mid-20th century, pop culture are seen to be rejecting the traditional as medical assistance in dying or saw the emergence of strong, some- female role of child-bearer, and are abortion, must refer patients to times controversial images of the feline viewed as aggressive in their pursuit physicians willing to provide the feminine. DC Comics introduced the of young men. Another way to look at medical care at issue . character Catwoman in the 1940s as a it, Keogh argued, is that cougars are The Divisional Court was unani- romantic interest for Batman. Over the confident, independent, unapologetically mous in stating that a failure to years, the Batman-Catwoman relation- in charge of their sexuality. Reclaiming provide an effective referral would shame and stigmatize patients seek- ship moved from print to the big screen, the notion of cougar therefore challen- ing a public service and would risk where Catwoman’s sexualized costuming ges the heteronormative double standard, denying health care to “vulnerable and image have been widely critiqued. in which an older man with a younger persons, including particular individ- Catwoman is at once a powerful super- woman is acceptable, but an older uals who are homeless, have linguistic hero and a seductress and her portrayals woman with a younger man is aberrant. or cultural barriers, have economic range from the fiercely feminist to In an era where feminists continue constraints in terms of travel, have hypersexualized and depoliticized. to lash out at pussy grabbing and intellectual disabilities, or experience Jeanie Keogh argued in her 2013 pussy shaming, expect even greater a lack of confidence after being told Herizons article “Why Cougars Deserve acts of reclamation involving the feline by their physician that the service Respect,” that cougars—older women in and the female.  they seek is morally repugnant .” NEW ZEALAND HAS A Activist Abby Lippman FEMINIST PM In October, New Remembered for Integrity Zealand Labour Party Leader Jacinda Ardern forged by ANNE ROCHON FORD a coalition with the country’s Green Party and the populist New Zealand The Canadian women’s health research First Party and became the world’s and advocacy community lost one of its youngest female head of government . sharpest minds at the end of 2017 when Declaring that the market economy Abby Lippman, professor emeritus at had “failed our people in recent McGill University, passed away unexpect- times,” Ardern, 37, pledged an inter- edly at her home in Montreal. She was 78. ventionist agenda to raise wages, Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1939, reduce child poverty, and achieve Lippman studied at Cornell University pay equity for women . in Ithaca NY, and at McGill University, where she earned her PhD in human CANADA TO REFORM JURY genetics (biology). She specialized in a PROCESS feminist analysis of genetic technolo- As a result of gies, biotechnology and the relationship protests following between women and pharmaceuticals. the outcome of the Lippman is credited for having coined case involving the death of Indigenous the term “geneticization,” which is used youth Colten Boushie, Ottawa says it to describe the disproportionate atten- will improve the jury selection process . tion accorded to genes as a determinant Boushie’s assailant, Gerald of health. Stanley, was found not guilty in the In everything Lippman wrote, from shooting death of the 22-year-old her PhD thesis on genetic counselling member of the Red Pheasant First to her questioning of the rapid intro- Nation in Saskatchewan in February . Justice Minister Jody Wilson- duction of the HPV vaccine for young Abby Lippman carries a sign honouring Quebec labour activist Madeleine Parent at a Raybould tabled Bill C-75, an omnibus girls, she always questioned who held tuition hike protest in Montreal. bill that would include the elimination the power in any relationship that fell of “peremptory challenges,” a means within a medical, pharmaceutical or McGill University, where she worked used by lawyers to reject potential health context. Lippman was driven to for more than 30 years. Although jury members without providing a expose the imbalances engendered by published widely in the scientific and reason to the court for doing so . power dynamics. medical literature, she often put her In the jury selection process for In 1979, Lippman started teach- sharp mind and her even sharper pen Stanley’s trial, it was reported that ing epidemiology and biostatistics at to work for causes she believed were Indigenous jury candidates were HERIZONS SPRING 2018 11 nelliegrams more worthy than peer-reviewed Hand. With her passing, many people journals. Lippman was an activist lost a close friend. To me she was a dismissed by Stanley’s lawyer . The first—a shit-disturber, as she often said. mentor, a critic (when I needed it) and fact that Stanley’s jury was report- In addition to regular book reviews a disseminator of sage advice. She was edly composed of non-Indigenous for Herizons, she penned many op-ed also quietly generous. On one occasion, people has been a focus for criti- pieces, letters to the editor and rebuttals when I was going through a tough cism . Peremptory challenges, legal to articles that she deemed to be fun- period financially, she “loaned” me some reformers say, can be used to skew damentally flawed, whether for reasons money but then insisted that I not repay a jury so that it is more likely to be of sloppy logic, commercial influence or her. Since her death, I have learned sympathetic to an accused . The new some other form of gross injustice. of others with whom she had similar bill would give a judge final say on An engaged and committed vol- arrangements. For example, she secretly whether jury members are rejected . unteer, Lippman was chair of the paid the bail for some protesters who SOMALILAND INTRODUCES Canadian Women’s Health Network were jailed during the Quebec student FIRST RAPE LAW for two terms, starting in 2000. The protests in 2012. Rapists in Somaliland now face up to organization brought women’s health The fiercely independent Lippman 20 years in jail after the conservative activists together from 1993 to 2014. would have been comforted in her life Islamic region passed its first law Two Quebec women’s health organiza- had she known that she would die against sexual assault in April . tions—Réseau Québécois d’action pour suddenly. Friends and family have taken The bill criminalizes other forms la santé des femmes and the Fédération solace in this, since her great fear was of gender violence, including forced du Québec pour le planning des nais- that she would become a burden on marriage, trafficking for sexual slav- sances—also benefitted from Lippman’s them. Accolades filled social media after ery and sexual harassment . coordinating abilities. She was also her death. Long-time friend and film- Ayan Mahamoud, Somaliland’s involved with anti-Zionist and pro-Pal- maker Laura Sky added, “No question representative in Britain, said that estinian rights organizations. was too dumb, no ideas too wild for our President Musa Bihi Abdi’s govern- Lippman is survived by her two Abby. We will miss her fine brain and ment, elected in November, sees children, Christopher Hand and Jessica her generous heart.” curbing sex crimes as a priority . 

PAY GAP MELTS IN ICELAND Companies in Tunisian Students Mark Iceland are now required to #MeToo Moment demonstrate that they pay male and by THARWA BOULIFI female employees fairly, without gender discrimination . Failure to do will result in fines . After female univer- After releasing Passed in January, the pro- sity students in Tunis, the video, students active law covers the private and Tunisia, posted an launched a petition public sectors and puts the onus online video describ- to have the professor on companies to prove that their ing incidents of sexual barred. In October, pay practices are fair . By compari- harassment involving Neila Chaabane, dean son, pay equity as it is practised in a retired Tunis El of the faculty, pro- Canada, typically applies to contract Manar University law hibited the professor negotiations affecting specific professor, officials from the campus. sectors only . Equal pay laws require barred the professor Marwa Maalawi, individuals to launch complaints . from their campus. the 24-year-old Equal pay laws, in place in Iceland It began when a Tunisian university student Marwa student who organ- since 1961, relied on an employee group of students Maalawi collected testimonials on ized the video, said video about sexual harassment. to prove that she was discriminated from the Faculty complaints ranged against . Iceland’s new law applies of Legal, Political from comments about to companies with 25 employees and Social Sciences of Tunis, part of students’ “sexy legs” to encounters that or more . Iceland has the best track record on gender equality in the world, Carthage University, uploaded the video were more sexually suggestive. according to the World Economic on Facebook last fall. In it, the students “It was his classical strategy to flirt with Forum . But the country had a pay gap describe incidents of harassment by the female students,” says Maalawi in the of 16 percent as of 2017 . The new law retired professor, who was a frequent video. “But I rejected his advances firmly.” passed a year after female candidates visitor to the campus. The professor, In 2017, Tunisia enacted a law won nearly half the seats in Iceland’s who was not publicly named, allegedly making sexual harassment an offence parliament . Iceland’s prime minister is harassed students as well as university punishable by two years in prison. 42-year-old Katrín Jakobsdóttir .  employees, including other professors. However, the law is not often applied, 12 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS and women in Tunisia are still com- conservative communities, talking should have dressed decently,’ and ‘What monly blamed and bullied if they about sexual harassment is viewed as a about her reputation and her family’s?’” report sexual harassment. sign of rebellion. However, Maalawi also received “In Tunisia and also around the “Most people considered the video positive feedback from many students world—to varying degrees of course— provocative,” said Maalawi. “For them, and professors. One hundred and fifty societies blame women who are victims stepping out and speaking about sexual signatures were on the petition. of sexual harassment or rape,” said harassment is a taboo and a poorly The battle against harassment in Maalawi. “In my case I wasn’t afraid looked [upon] thing.” Tunisia has just begun, she notes. because I wasn’t fighting on my own.” Maalawi received a backlash of “This professor is certainly not the Maalawi says society’s acceptance of negative comments on social media only one who harasses female students,” harassment can be changed if women following the release of the video. said Maalawi. “We had many echoes publicly denounce their aggres- “I had heard a lot of aggressive com- regarding similar harassment cases in sors. In Tunisia, much like in other ments about the video, such as: ‘She other universities.” 

Afghan Women in Media Focus of New Film

by VIVIEN FELLIGI

Jamalzadah tackled taboo subjects such as child abuse and domestic assault. She packaged her segments as skits in order to engage her audience. “You have to get into their hearts before you try to get into their minds,” said Jamalzadah. The Mozhdah Show helped to change the lives of many women. One woman drove for hours from the city of Herat to meet her hero. “The abuse in my family has gone down thanks to you,” she told Jamalzadah, “Don’t stop what Roberta Stanley’s film Mightier Than the Sword received the Best Canadian Documentary award at the you’re doing.” 2017 Female Eye Film Festival. Many media outlets in Afghanistan have begun to address women’s When magazine writer Roberta Staley Afghanistan to document the lives of concerns, however there has also been travelled to Afghanistan in 2012, she female journalists. opposition. Jamalzadah received death was surprised to see a female anchor Mightier than the Sword is her tribute threats from outraged clerics and began hosting the television news. When she’d to them. The documentary premiered to sleep with a gun under her pillow. been in the country years earlier, women in 2017 and won the Best Canadian After she filmed a segment on divorce, were not seen on air. Documentary award at the 2017 Female the Canadian Embassy warned her of “That was such an enormous leap Eye Film Festival. It also received an imminent danger. The next day, she from life under the Taliban—only 11 Award of Merit at the 2017 IndieFEST flew back to Vancouver. years earlier, women couldn’t show their Film Awards. Jamalzadah, who is also a trained faces, let alone speak to an entire nation,” Mozhdah Jamalzadah is one of singer, decided to write songs to Staley observed. the three young women who are the battle misogyny. One song, “Tribute Since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, focus of the 46-minute film. Born in to Farkhunda,” was inspired by a mob Afghan women have poured into jobs in Afghanistan, she immigrated to Canada killing in which a group of men killed the media, fighting for gender equality with her family at age five. Her parents and then burned a young woman named as reporters, directors, producers and instilled in her a sense of duty toward Farkhunda Malikzada, who had been writers as they strive to tell the stories of her homeland, exposing her to Afghan falsely accused of burning the Quran. women’s lives in the country. news coverage while she was growing Jamalzadah returned to Kabul where she Staley wanted to give voice to the up. “I felt a sense of responsibility for released the song and an accompanying bravery of such women. And so, after Afghanistan,” she said. video which went viral. remortgaging her condo to pay for Jamalzadah became a journalist and Documentarian Sahar Fetrat is camera equipment, she learned how to in 2009 returned to her hometown of another woman who set out to make a direct and produce from online courses. Kabul, where she landed a job as a talk difference. “We are constantly reminded In the summer of 2015, she returned to show host. On The Mozhdah Show, that our work doesn’t matter, and our

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 13 worth is nothing,” said Fetrat, who Universocorto Elba Film Festival. empowered, rather than as merely is studying business at the American Fetrat, who took part in a public oppressed. “We’re trying to take University of Afghanistan. debate on harassment with a local pol- responsibility and change things for In 2013, when she was 17, Fetrat itician and a local mullah, says the idea ourselves,” she says. created Do Not Trust My Silence, a that women invite their own abuse is The third woman followed in the film documentary about street harassment. already shifting in Afghanistan. is Shakila Ibrahimkhail, a 30-something Using a hand-held hidden camera, she “Now that they’ve stopped blam- television journalist who has covered walked the streets of Kabul, captur- ing themselves for being harassed, it women’s rights and political corruption. ing men catcalling, propositioning makes me feel my fight was worth it,” She fled to Germany after the Taliban her and grabbing women on public said Fetrat. attacked a bus carrying her colleagues, transit. Fetrat’s film was broadcast on Fetrat agreed to participate in killing seven of them. two Afghan television stations and Mightier than the Sword because Staley Staley hopes to show the documen- it garnered first prize in the Italian sought to portray Afghan women as tary in Afghanistan. 

Sex Slaves Demand Apology by AMANDA LE ROUGETEL

Saying you are sorry can be a powerful the Japanese government. Three of was damaged so badly, and could never act that recognizes responsibility and these euphemistically named “comfort bear any other children.” is often the first step on the path to women” are profiled in a powerful and Gil was only 13 when she was lured reconciliation and healing. In Canada, we moving National Film Board (NFB) by a soldier who promised her a job in know the power of an official apology— documentary titled The Apology. a factory. “I hurt all the time; I cried. I Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has Now in their 80s, these women thought my body was breaking. I got recently offered official apologies to resi- continue to protest in the streets, to a disease, had multiple operations that dential school survivors in Newfoundland lobby internationally and to educate made me sterile…. For over 70 years, I and Labrador, to survivors of the Sixties locally about all the victims of wartime have not lived like a normal person.” Scoop, and to civil servants, military sexual violence. Called “Grandma” as Adela was 14 when she was abducted members and other Canadians who were a sign of respect, Cao from China, Gil and held for three months. When she discriminated against on the basis of their from South Korea and Adela from the escaped, she told only her mother. “It’s sexual orientation. Philippines tearfully and wrenchingly very shameful to be a victim, for a In China, South Korea and North tell their stories of abduction, sexual woman to be raped,” she says in the film. Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and violence and long-lasting shame from all The women speak openly of the Indonesia, the 200,000 women who those decades ago. physical and emotional pain with which were forcibly taken by Japanese Cao was held for two years: they continue to live, the burden of soldiers during the Second World “Whenever they wanted a girl, they just which has coloured their daily lives. War to be their sexual slaves are still entered her room…. I gave birth to two Adela later married but never told her waiting for an official apology from children; I had to strangle the baby…. I husband what she experienced. In the documentary, we see her gathering her courage to tell her son. “I would be very happy to tell my children and they could accept what happened to me.” It is very moving to see these senior women chanting “Apologize, apologize, apologize!” in their weekly protests outside the Japanese Embassy, and it is infuriatingly familiar to hear right-wing critics call them liars. The women want to be believed as much as they want the government to issue an unqualified apology. They are still waiting. Saying you are sorry may not change the past, but it can light the flame of hope and help the “heart to heal,” as Gil says in the film. “I am waiting for that day.” Time The Apology documents the resilience of women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese is running out for the few remaining troops in the Second World War. grandmas to hear those healing words.  14 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS BODY POLITIC BY JOANNA CHIU

SUPPORT AND SOLIDARITY EMPOWER US

For me and for many other people I’ve talked with recently, button, even people with a naturally sunny disposition can the last year has been a hard one in terms of stress and men- be forgiven for feeling stressed and helpless. Many people tal health. It’s hit home that climate change is already having seem to be asking how to be chipper and a new course on catastrophic effects. A lot of places in the world were burn- happiness at Yale University is reportedly one of the most ing up last summer as a result of forest fires, and the thick popular in the school’s history. haze in Vancouver worsened my newly developed asthma. Broader environmental stress is often coupled with I read heartbreaking stories about elderly couples clinging personal factors for stress, such as financial pressures to each other in swimming pools to try to survive the fires in and family issues. For clinically depressed people, some- California, and then came the news about Rohingya people thing as simple as reaching out to a friend to talk about being raped and slaughtered by members of the Myanmar problems can seem impossible. I’ve been in a position army. Then I was back in China, surrounded by guards for where I’ve felt extremely isolated and yet I didn’t want to trying to visit the home of a widow who was told that her connect with others. I’ve also been prone to self-criticism husband died of cancer while in police custody; his crime and to irrational feelings of guilt. was to have peacefully advocated for democracy. Because I’ve recovered from that tough time, I try to be As the 2018 year began, I decided to make my health proactive now about safeguarding my mental health. I am more of a priority in my life. Strategies involve exercise fortunate that I have the ability to travel to unwind, and classes and cute animal videos, though I admit they are to help me maintain a healthy sense of perspective. I’ve not enough to keep me feeling optimistic. organized dinners with colleagues to commiserate about Glancing at my news feed is always upsetting, and yet I job pressures, and, even when I’m lethargic, I push myself don’t have the option of disconnecting. Sometimes I wish it out of bed to go to the gym. wasn’t my job to interview widows and family members of One of the things I’ve learned is that reaching out to detained and tortured activists, but my work also gives me seek help is actually a sign of strength. When I spoke a sense of purpose. I count myself among those journalists with a counsellor recently about my own work-related who are proud of their role in figuring out what’s true, and stress, she told me that she could relate to what I had in making sure that important events are not forgotten. said. Apparently, it can be a heavy burden to speak with Many of my friends have also chosen to work in jobs patients all day about their often sad and difficult situ- where they are often forced to face the ugly side of ations. To cope, the counsellor gets together with other humanity. Many friends also volunteer for causes they mental health professionals to talk about cases—no real care about or are involved in important social and political names, of course—and to offer support to one another. issues. All of this can be unpleasant and can endanger Simply knowing that others are dealing with similar one’s mental health. And yet it also offers the satisfaction challenges can bring relief. That is why the #MeToo move- of feeling that one is contributing to the greater good. ment, in bringing harrowing stories of harassment and What, then, should we do when satisfaction is hard to assault out in in the open, is also comforting and powerful. find, especially when it seems that, despite our best efforts, For me, working in China has kept me far from the things seem to be getting worse, not better? What should comfort of my family and supports. Soon I will return we do when anger seems like a righteous reaction, even as home to Vancouver while continuing to work in Asia it drains us? part-time. My aim is to strike a balance, taking care of When the president of the most powerful country in myself so that I will have the strength to continue to the world brags about the size of his nuclear-destruction listen to the stories of others.  HERIZONS SPRING 2018 15 LIDOPolaris Music Prize-Winner PIMIENTA Combines Love and Absolute Rage

by EVELYN C. WHITE

t’s doubtful that the founders of the $50,000 Polaris Music Prize—launched a decade ago to honour Canadian artists who produce albums of distinc- I tion—ever imagined that it would one day be claimed by a performer whose album had only been released online and who, eschewing the country’s official languages, had purposefully recorded the work in her native Spanish. And then there was her acceptance speech: “I hope that the Aryan specimen who told me to go back to my country two weeks after arriving in London, Ontario, is watching this,” said Colombia-born singer Lido Pimienta in a nationally televised broadcast last September after winning the coveted award for her self-produced album La Papessa (high priestess). Turning to a woman who was among a rainbow coali- tion she’d brought to the stage, Pimienta, 31, continued: “I want to thank my mother for being so resilient and for enduring white supremacy in Canada…. She [also] gets told to go back…. I want to say thank you to the [First Nations] protectors of the land we’re standing on … the real people of this country. Thank you for allowing me to be a guest on your land.” There is more. In a parting salvo that evoked the kick-ass spirit of Nina Simone, herself revered as a high priestess of soul, Pimienta cursed those responsible for technical glitches that, in her view, undermined her live performance at the Polaris Music Prize gala event. Pimienta, the single mother of a nine-year-old son, was slammed by Internet trolls. A few weeks after the event, she found herself performing in Halifax, where, as is her custom, she invited women of colour to rock with her at the front of the venue. As a result, Pimienta has been accused of indulging in “reverse racism,” and her detractors promote the false notion that she “bans white people from her shows.” Not surprisingly, Pimienta has faced threats of bodily harm.

16 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS LIDO PIMIENTA

Lido Pimienta has spent her career bridging gaps. (Photo: Tanja Tiziana)

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 17 Joanne Kerrigan is a Caucasian woman who attended said I would be a star,” she explains. “So he gave me the Halifax concert. “I thought it was righteous that an international name, Lido, to usher me through Lido asked the dudes to move, and created a safe space the world.” for folks who’ve been on the margins,” she said. “We Sadly, Pimienta’s father died of cancer when she need much more of that right now.” In an affi rmation was six. Her mother took over the family business of Pimienta’s transformative impact on the Canadian and, adamant about education, enrolled Pimienta in music scene, the Globe and Mail declared her Canada’s extracurricular activities (visual arts, dance and violin 2017 artist of the year. lessons) to enhance her studies in an elite bilingual During a freewheeling phone chat from her home school where she became fl uent in English. There, in Toronto, Pimienta shared refl ections on her she says, her blonde, blue-eyed classmates taunted ascent with La Papessa, which turns on themes of her for having brown skin and kinky hair. personal healing, respect for Mother Earth and “They actually cut off a lock of my hair to inspect social justice. The work was not released in trad- the curls,” Pimienta recalls. “The bullying was so itional album format until her surprise victory over normal that I’ve only begun to process it. Back then, marquee Canadian musicians. it was just an everyday thing.” “Everything I said in my Polaris speech has been Pimienta adds that her English language skills gave confi rmed by the hate that has been directed at me her “status and value” when she later attended a school since I won the award,” she says. “What is the chance with more minority students. “I was dissed in one school that an album without even a physical record would by white kids for being brown, and envied in another best the almighty Feist, the almighty Leonard Cohen, by brown kids because I spoke English. I’ve always had the almighty Gord Downie? I am receiving the prize to bridge the gap and fi nd my own way.” with open arms but am suspicious. I am smart enough To that end, Pimienta abandoned the violin. Instead, to understand the politics.” she got tight with a group of local drummers who On that note, Pimienta suggests that current efforts encouraged her to perform in street carnivals. to reconcile with First Nations and other historically “I got my real education from the Afro-Colombian disenfranchised groups may lead to more stories being women singers whose ancestors had escaped slavery,” told by people of colour. “We have complex stories she says. “From them, I learned how to project my voice of real struggle that most whites don’t want to hear,” and command attention when I’m onstage. Now, when she says. “As an immigrant, I know I’ve been viewed I’m performing, I visualize people lining the streets in as a societal burden who just wanted to take from Barranquilla. So I’ve got to bring it every time.” Canada and not give anything back.” Alarmed by increasing political violence in Pimienta’s inspiring story begins with the rich Afro- Colombia, Pimienta’s mother moved to Los Angeles, Indigenous culture of coastal Barranquilla, Colombia, alone, when Lido was 14. into which she was born the middle child of three siblings. Her father was a music afi cionado and an “eccentric” owner of maritime ventures who, Pimienta says, named her after a French entrepreneur that he

admired. “When I came out of the womb, my father John Paille Photo:

“When I came out of the womb, my father said I would be a star. So he gave me an international name, Lido, to usher me through the world.” —lido PimiEnta

18 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS “She had a relative there but didn’t like Los Angeles “I’m still on the path of learning how to be a pro- because it was too fast,” Pimienta recalls. “A friend ducer,” she says. “I don’t need to be a virtuoso on in Alberta told my mom to immigrate to Canada every aspect of music production, but want to learn because ‘nothing ever happens there,’” she says with as much as possible.” a laugh. Pimienta is mindful of the unprecedented strides The Canadian government sent her to London, she’s made with La Papessa. Listeners familiar with Ontario, because, as Pimienta tells it, that’s where the techno-pop beats of the 1980s-era group DeBarge all other Colombians were living. “She took a risk will find echoes of their sound in“ Fornicarte Es Un for her children and did what the white authorities Arte” (fornication is an art). “La Capacidad” (you are told her to do.” able to) celebrates resilience. In “Agua” (water), the Pimienta lived with an aunt in Colombia and didn’t singer delivers a mesmerizing chant that both calms see her mother for five years. The pain is palpable and invigorates. when she discusses her quinceanera—the traditional “Winner of the Polaris Prize,” are the words on a Latin celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday—that her sticker affixed to her album. But the prize signifies mother was unable to attend. “I was cool with holding much more for the artist who has faced many obstacles my quinceanera party in my apartment with a bunch since her 6,400-kilometre journey from Colombia to of my punk friends,” Pimienta says. “But I know my Canada, including the unexpected death of her brother. mother was heartbroken because she couldn’t be “La Papessa is about how to empower oneself with with me. Separation and loss are major parts of the education and self-care,” she says. “It is almost a immigrant narrative that people need to understand.” 12-step program for rehabilitation and honouring my Upon her arrival in Canada, Pimienta, then 19, brother’s passing. It has healed the turmoil one feels was determined to continue her education and to when one’s family falls apart and you blame yourself.” secure a job. While gathering the documents needed Buoyed by her success, Pimienta is now recording to move forward, she was dumbfounded when a Miss Colombia, a tongue-in-cheek play on the nostalgia government official suggested that she first attend she feels for her homeland and an infamous incident English as a second language (ESL) classes. that occurred at the 2015 Miss Universe pageant. “I’m in this lady’s office speaking perfect English,” Emcee Steve Harvey flubbed his cue card and mis- Pimienta recalls. “And she’s telling me I need to sign takenly announced Miss Colombia as the winner of up for ESL. It’s the kind of racism immigrants face the crown, instead of Miss Philippines. every day.” “It’s a cynical love letter to my birth country for Pimienta gained quick admission to the Bealart selling out to mining corporations,” she says. “It’s School in her new hometown of London, Ontario. a message to Colombians who don’t respect our Founded in the late 1920s, the institution is hailed Indigenous people. What I do is pure and comes as one of the most progressive art schools in Canada. from a place of love and absolute rage. Miss Colombia “They said I needed 10 drawings in multiple genres will have those qualities and a generous dose of brass.” and I returned the next day with a portfolio of 20,” In a nod to her solidarity with other daring women- she says. “I was asked on the spot to paint a mural in of-colour musicians, Pimienta adds that she fully the school that’s still there. I loved art school.” intends “to write songs for Solange and Rihanna.” One thing Pimienta did not groove to, however, She has already released “Camellando,” a dazzling was her low-wage work engraving key chains and Spanish remix of Rihanna’s smash hit “Work.” She refilling computer ink cartridges at the local mall.“ I explains that in the slang spoken in Barranquilla, was upper-echelon-terrible at the jobs,” she muses. camellando means riding the camel, or working hard. “I screamed at the customers and didn’t last long. So “I reinterpreted Rihanna’s song and took it up a notch I focused on my art, which I sold at craft shows and to pay homage to the women who do the physical online. I still do.” and emotional labour in families,” says Pimienta, who Building on the musical talents she’d honed on the identifies as queer.“ People have loved it.” streets of Barranquilla, Pimienta released her first “Yes, lady!” raved an online admirer of the song. album, Color (2010) in collaboration with her husband Before signing off, the inimitable Pimienta reveals at the time. After the couple split, Pimienta refined that she is also labouring on another project. “I want her technical skills by watching music production to have a daughter,” she says, gleefully. “She will be tutorials. She also began performing with groups strong. She will be independent. She will be fantastic. such as A Tribe Called Red. She will be a miracle. Just like … guess who?” 

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 19 “Haunting, powerful, and important.” Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved and The Value of Nothing

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“Every page of this book glows with Moyles’s affection for the women she travels the world to meet.” Marcello di Cintio, author of Walls

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20 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS Misogynoir in Canada Robyn Maynard Documents the Policing of Black Lives in Canada

by CHERYL THOMPSON

obyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present gives one of the first R comprehensive accounts of 400 hun- dred years of state-sanctioned violence against Black people in Canada. While the victims of police surveillance, harass- ment and violence are often presumed to be young Black men, Maynard’s book reminds us that the violence experienced by Black women has been largely unseen and under-reported. “It’s really important that we don’t overlook the realities that Black women are also facing, even though they sometimes look a little different to what we are traditionally trained to see in terms of what oppression looks like, and what racial oppression looks like in particular,” Maynard says. In the 1980s, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to describe the ways in which different forms of discrimination overlap and, as it relates to Black women’s lives, how racism and sexism play out on Black women’s bodies. More recently, queer Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey coined the term “misogynoir” to address a specific form of gendered violence that affects Black women. While Maynard focuses on specific cases involving young Black men and police violence— such as Jermaine Carby, shot and killed by Peel Regional Police in Brampton, Ontario, in 2014; Andrew Loku, shot and killed by Toronto police a year later; and Bony Jean-Pierre, shot and

Black women as well as Black men are policed and victimized by state- killed by Montreal police in 2016—her book sanctioned violence in Canada, says author Robyn Maynard. acknowledges the intersectionality of race and

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 21 gender in state-sanctioned violence, and the Toronto’s Black Experience Project found that specific ways Black Canadian women experience nearly 80 percent of Black men between the ages misogynoir, or misogyny directed specifically at of 25 and 44 said they had been stopped by police Black women. in public in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). “It was really crucial for me to look at the inter- The project, started in 2011 as a joint part- sections of sexism and racism, because even in our nership with the Diversity Institute at Ryerson own communities we still see the privileging of University, the United Way, the YMCA and the male experience,” explains Maynard. York University, did not provide clear statistics “Black women are criminalized and policed in on the policing experiences of Black women in their own homes. And that’s something that was the GTA. important to me, because, if you look at the actual Maynard says the federal government’s lack of policing powers that have been granted to social attention to the issue of racial profiling, carding services agencies who go into poor Black women’s and Black incarceration is troubling. homes to search their belongings, and even [to] “At a certain point, you really need to say that it take their kids away, we just don’t think about is being ignored, and it is being ignored because it that as policing—but that is a form of police doesn’t fit into this Canadian narrative of embracing violence as well.” diversity and multiculturalism,” she states. Maynard traces the issue of misogynoir and the “I really tried carefully to point this out in the policing of Black women’s lives back to a 1995 book—how Canadians have always taken a great report on systemic racism in the Ontario criminal pride in pointing to American racism and talk- justice system, which found that a disproportionate ing about how Canada has a different way of number of African and Caribbean women visiting approaching things while ignoring the issues right from abroad, but also Canadian or Caribbean-born here,” Maynard explains. Black women returning from vacations, were being The calculated and curated national image of arrested, jailed and criminalized as “drug mules,” Canadians as peacemakers and Canada as a safe the colloquial term for transporting illegal drugs haven has also had an impact on how we view into and out of any country. our foreign policy, especially with regard to the Because state-sanctioned violence suffered by global refugee crisis. Black women often takes different forms to that According to the International Organization for experienced by Black men—such as strip searches, Migration, for example, an estimated 4,655 people public harassment and the presumption that Black died in 2016 trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea women are involved in the drug and sex trades— to reach Italy from sub-Saharan African nations Maynard asserts that most people don’t even think like Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana and Nigeria. about these issues when it comes to policing. While Canada has made financial contributions “We need to widen our frame of what policing to this refugee crisis, it has not pledged an increase looks like, and how it is actually impacting us—to in the refugee intake from countries in Africa. look at the ways, for example, carding is impacting “[The Mediterranean crisis] has not been seen Black women, and if not, what are the other ways as a humanitarian crisis, because Black people that Black women are experiencing state surveil- aren’t seen as humans in the same way as other lance, harm and violence.” groups,” says Maynard. Carding is an intelligence-gathering practice While Canadians take pride in their govern- used by police services across the country. It ment’s benevolence toward Syrian refugees, the involves stopping, questioning and documenting author believes the Canadian government has not individuals, even when no particular offence is done enough to assist Black migrants and refugees being investigated. Their information is then col- from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. lected and kept on record for unspecified periods “There should be immediate action because of time. it is an emergency. [It] has been happening to The issue of carding in Toronto came into the people for decades [in Africa]…. But what we’re spotlight when activist Desmond Cole penned an seeing is that empathy is not distributed equally article for Toronto Life in 2015, in which he talked amongst races.” about his carding experiences. A 2017 study of just When Maynard was a teenager in Montreal, over 1,500 Black-identified people conducted by she began documenting racist and gender-based

22 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS violence against Black people. In her opinion, the youth. They’re seen as older and more dangerous,” city has its own unique set of problems regarding explains Maynard. state-sanctioned violence. BLMTO has also launched Freedom School, “Some of the first activism work I did in Montreal a three-week program for children aged four to was with an activist group called Project X, and we 10 that aims to affirm Black children by offering were just trying to document the experiences of a queer-positive educational space. The program youth of colour and of Black youth, because nobody has largely been driven by the efforts of Black thinks of Montreal as this place where Black people Toronto women. can barely exist in public,” says Maynard. “[The Freedom School] is another beautiful “If you look at Montreal, which communities model of teaching Black youth not only about have access to decent public transit and community Black contributions to history, and also of the health services? There are many neighbourhoods realities for Black queer and Black trans people, but where people have difficulties accessing health ser- also the contributions of different Black liberation vices or even transport, and a lot of that is racially movements,” she explains. distributed. [It’s] something that we really don’t While Policing Black Lives is a book about Black pay enough attention to in a Canadian context.” people, Maynard hopes that white people will Black children and their mothers are also victims gain as much from learning about Black history of over-policing. as Black people do. “We have a certain standard of what policing is, and, for me, policing is also about child welfare in schools,” she says. “That actually is state mon- itoring, and not just monitoring, but the actual punishment of people.” “To be treated as if they don’t In 2017, the mother of a six-year-old Black girl matter, and as if they’re who was handcuffed by police at her elementary dangerous and harmful— school in Mississauga, Ontario, launched a formal complaint against Peel Regional Police. The offi- that is just traumatic.” cers said that the unarmed child was acting in a —robyn maynard violent manner. The incident became a lightening rod for Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) and its campaign to eliminate the School Resource Officer Program, which stationed uniformed offi- “White youth also need to learn about the cers in Toronto-area schools. country that they’re coming into, and they’re par- “I am really happy to see movements, again, to ticipating in, because they’re going to be the adults get police out of schools,” says Maynard. of tomorrow. And if they’re not learning their “It’s abhorrent for this to happen to adults, but to history, either—and the history of white suprem- [handcuff ] young people that are still just learning acy in Canada, and [the history of ] anti-Black about the world around them … to be exposed racism—then it’s much less likely that they’re to this level of violence and to be treated as if going to grow up to not only find it wrong, but they don’t matter, and as if they’re dangerous and to challenge it,” says Maynard. harmful—that is just traumatic.” The issues Maynard explores in her book reflect The move to eliminate uniformed police offi- the continued importance of Crenshaw’s inter- cers from schools is part of a larger strategy by sectionality and Bailey’s misogynoir. She asks BLMTO to target anti-Black racism in the edu- readers to think about the impact of sexism and cation system, including the implementation of racism on the lives of Black women and children— anti-Black racism training, and the creation of an perspectives we rarely hear about in the policing advisory board of Black parents. of Black lives. “One of the things I was trying to point out is Black Canadian historian Afua Cooper has how Black children are not actually perceived as described Policing Black Lives as “timely, urgent, innocent. So, while the state often protects white and cogent.” Without question, Maynard’s book youth to a certain extent, because of a perceived is sure to become the reading companion to Black innocence, that innocence is often denied to Black feminist activism from here forward. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 23 Upstaging Patriarachy Theatre Companies Tear Down Gender and Race Exclusion

by ANDI y feminist theatre education started struck many, especially in light of the recent SCHWARTZ by accident. In 2013, I was attracted sexual harassment allegations against Toronto M to a show at Toronto’s Buddies in theatre director Albert Schultz of Soulpepper Bad Times Theatre because of its title: Dirty Theatre Company. Plotz: Witness the Hidden Vagenda. I brought an Not coincidentally, it was women’s treatment in equally green friend along to indulge my curi- mainstream theatre that jump-started the femi- osity. The cabaret, curated by Alex Tigchelaar, nist theatre movement. Among the first feminist figuratively and literally examined “The Sacred theatre companies in Canada were the Nellie and Profane Hole.” Brand new to the world of McClung Theatre, founded in Winnipeg in 1968, feminist, queer or alternative theatre, we both the Redlight Theatre, founded in Toronto in found the experience overwhelming, hilarious, 1974, and Théâtre Expérimental des Femmes intriguing and confusing. (now Espace Go), founded in Quebec in 1979. One thing that has stuck with me about my Leading up to the birth of the Théâtre first feminist theatre experience was the howling Expérimental des Femmes, co-founder Pol Pelletier laughter when the performers joked about sexism was part of an experimental theatre in Montreal. in the theatre community. It’s a chord that has Even in this “radical” group, women were sidelined.

Carol Greyeyes (left) with the first cohort of students in the Aboriginal Theatre Program at the University of Saskatchewan. The program is named wîcêhtowin, a Cree word meaning living in harmony together. (Photo: Dave Stoble)

24 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS “I [became] more and more aware that women could out emotional fires of male [artistic directors] that take not work with men and be free and equal,” says Pelletier. offence or feel that they’re being judged, but I think “I kept saying, ‘We need a women’s theatre.’” it’s an unconscious bias of programming. As an [artistic These early feminist theatre groups were an antidote director], I program stuff that speaks to me.” to a startling reality. In 1982, Rina Fraticelli penned a Hope McIntyre, artistic director of Winnipeg’s report titled “The Status of Women in Canadian Theatre.” Sarasvati Productions, says the exclusion of women She surveyed 1,156 productions staged in 104 Canadian from mainstream theatre can be partly credited to theatres between 1978 and 1981, and found that women the long-standing dominance of the “well-made play” accounted for only 10 percent of playwrights, 13 percent structure. This traditional structure, which has a dis- of directors, and 11 percent of artistic directors. tinct beginning, middle and end, and sees the climax These statistics have improved, but women are still and resolution play out in the third act, has roots in far from achieving parity. According to the Canadian Greek tradition and the Elizabethan era but is often initiative Equity in Theatre, despite constituting more credited to French dramatist Eugene Scribe. According than half of theatre audiences and half of theatre school to McIntyre, this male-dominated genre remains the students, women still fill fewer than 35 percent of leader- standard in theatre studies, which contributes to the ship roles in Canadian theatres. In addition, a survey exclusivity and elitism felt in theatre today. Like most of 812 productions in the 2013–2014 season showed institutions, Canadian theatre has earned a reputation that only 22 percent of plays were written by women as an old boys’ club. while 15 percent were written by mixed-gender teams. Feminist theatre companies started building their This is more than a quest for equal numbers. According own reputations as spaces where female playwrights to Kelly Thornton, artistic director of Toronto’s Nightwood could flourish. In the 1980s, Nightwood started the Theatre, leadership dictates programming. Groundswell festival, a development program for new “Female leadership impacts programming choices. works by women. You get more female playwrights,” she says. “I have put “That was kind of a game-changer for the company because I think it really found its purpose, and really began to give voice to the female writers in Canada,” says Thornton. “We have trained so much emerging talent that has gone on to leadership roles.” Founded by Cynthia Grant, Kim Renders, Mary Vingoe and Maureen White in 1979, Nightwood initially operated as a collective with a predilection for experimental aesthetics. “They were branded ‘the women’s theatre’ because, you know, you get four women together and suddenly it’s a women’s theatre; you get four men together and it’s theatre,” says Thornton. The company quickly came to embrace the label, however, and has supported the careers of notable Canadian playwrights like Ann-Marie MacDonald and Djanet Sears. Toronto has been a hub of feminist theatre for decades. Buddies in Bad Times, also founded in 1979, is Toronto’s gay and lesbian theatre. Buddies’ stage has long been graced by fierce queer female talent, including contem- porary work by Gein Wong, Catherine Hernandez and Evalyn Parry. Buddies was also home to the lesbian cabaret show Strange Sisters, which ran annually from 1990 to 2009. The cabaret was resurrected as Insatiable Sisters in 2014 by Wong and co-curator Kim Milan. Feminist theatre also took roots elsewhere in Canada starting in the late 1960s. Marie Savord’s 1969 Bien à moi is credited as the first Québécois feminist play and is part of a rich history of feminist plays that take a hands-on approach to women’s bodies and sexuality

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 25 It featured a scene of auto-eroticism that reportedly shocked Quebec audiences. When feminist theatre found a hub in the Théâtre Expérimental des Femmes, the work elicited more enthusiasm. “Immense fervour. Heat! Love! Hunger!” Pelletier describes the response. “I lived a period as an artist [when] I knew I was answering a need,” she says. The feminist theatre scene on the East Coast has also been active since the late 1960s. Nova Scotian playwright Cindy Cowan pieced together this history, noting that women’s experiences, specifically the “real- ities of Maritime life,” were often the subject of early Nova Scotian feminist theatre. Companies like LunaSea Theatre and Rolling Bold Productions continue feminist and queer theatre in Atlantic Canada. Feminist theatre is defined not only by its bolster- ing of women’s voices, but also by its willingness to challenge theatre traditions and audiences. According to professor Jane Moss, the kind of corporeality that both startles and stimulates audiences, like that found in Bien à moi and Dirty Plotz, is a significant aspect of feminist theatre. In addition to its subversive content, feminist theatre is known for its subversive structures. Inspired by experimental theatre of the 1970s, it often contrasts the well-made play by using what is called the “exploded text”—where the narrative is comprised of multiple voices, non-linear structure, interruptions and repetitions. Sarasvati Productions, founded in 1998, is billed as knew fairly early on that I wanted to do theatre, but I a “transformative” theatre. Sarasvati seeks to transform was torn about whether I wanted to be an activist or community by working with sectors of society that an artist,” says McIntyre. traditionally haven’t had much access to theatre audi- Much feminist theatre is about combining both of ences. It offers audiences an opportunity to view the these impulses, whether using the stage to tell stories world differently, while the artists involved gain skills about women, people of colour or the working class, or and create a unique artwork. using plays as a medium to protest social and political “We have to make sure that theatre as an art form issues. For example, Halifax’s Never Again Affinity is being receptive,” says McIntyre. “We have to make Group performed in the street to protest nuclear war sure we aren’t stuck in a tradition that isn’t actually in the 1980s, and Toronto’s Pretty Porky and Pissed serving us anymore.” Off collective used street performances as part of its She tells about the creation of Jail Baby, a 2013 play multi-pronged attack on fat phobia from 1996 to 2005. she co-wrote with Cairn Moore. The play is about Many marginalized communities turn to theatre to a woman named Jasmine who, born in prison and talk back to the dominant culture that excludes them. raised by a mother who was frequently incarcerated, In 2015, Carol Greyeyes helped to form an Aboriginal wants a different future for her unborn child. Jail theatre program at the University of Saskatchewan. Her Baby was borne out of an unusually collaborative aim is to offer students an opportunity to incorporate process between playwrights and women living in Indigenous traditions into the Western theatre tradition. correctional facilities. Greyeyes earned a bachelor of fine arts in drama at “We went into correctional institutions, compiled the University of Saskatchewan. [their stories] and went back to the space, and they “I found that my experience and my voice were not acted it and they offered feedback,” explains McIntyre. reflected in the content of the program,” she says. “I think Collaborative processes in the theatre world stem it’s become kind of a little bit of a crusade to find ways from feminist values of collaboration and inclusion. “I to include that perspective in performing-arts training.”

26 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS A scene from Sarasvati Productions play MissNMe. (Photo: Janet Shum)

Pol Pelletier (far left) co-founded Théâtre Expérimental des Femmes in Montreal. She is shown here in a scene from La nef des sorcières.

Hope McIntyre (left) founded the feminist theatre company Sarasvati Productions and created Winnipeg’s FemFest. (Photo: Janet Shum)

The two-year program, which Greyeyes was first Until then, the theatre workers will keep working. approached to develop in 2001, finally launched in Greyeyes will be tweaking wîcêhtowin to make it 2015. The program is named wîcêhtowin, a Cree more accessible for students. She questions whether word meaning living in harmony together. This such a program ultimately belongs at an institution illustrates the Indigenous values that the program like the University of Saskatchewan, but overall is based on. One of the core courses of the pro- she considers it a success. gram is Indigenous Methods, which includes Cree “This program is not going to save the world or language immersion and tipi teachings. achieve truth and reconciliation in this country,” she “If you’re going to do artistic work from a says. “But it’s better to light a single candle than cultural perspective you need to have an under- curse the darkness. I guess we’re trying to do that.” standing of the culture,” says Greyeyes. For Pelletier, the feminist movement in Quebec The students also study plays by Indigenous seems to have waned with the separatist move- writers. In one course, they each wrote their own ment and the killing of 14 women in the 1989 scene and then wove them all into a narrative. Montreal massacre. They told honest stories about their lives, includ- “That was all of Quebec patriarchy saying to ing stories of violence, resilience, and humour. women, shut […] up. And it worked,” she believes. By creating spaces to explore alternative forms Although Pelletier is skeptical about the future of theatre, these companies are working to fem- of feminist theatre, Thornton has faith in the inize, queer and indigenize an institution that next wave. has historically excluded them. “There are myriad young feminist theatre “Ultimately, that is our goal: We achieve parity companies—the baby Nightwoods of the world, and there is equal representation, and we won’t which is really just what we were in 1979: four have to have a festival unique to feminist artists,” women going, ‘I got a couple ideas, you wanna says McIntyre. meet at my house?’” 

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 27 must-read books for fearless women

28 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS

Harper Collins Full Spring-18.indd 1 2018-04-10 5:54 PM Alanis Obomsawin Legendary filmmaker releases her 50th film by DOREEN NICOLL

ow do you do justice to a body of The hope Obomsawin documents at Norway work spanning 50 years—espe- House Cree Nation is palpable. From preschool- cially when that work exposes ers learning the Cree language to elementary H systemic racism, government and high school students learning to play the deceptions, double standards, the expropriation violin, the new Helen Betty Osborne Ininew of sacred burial lands and the federal govern- Education Resource Centre is a core part of the ment’s non-compliance with an order by the transformations that are occurring. Canadian Human Rights Tribunal? The school was named in honour of Helen You begin by speaking with the creator of these Betty Osborne, a 19-year-old Cree woman important works. from Norway House who had moved to The Alanis Obomsawin is a member of the Abenaki Pas, Manitoba, to study to become a teacher. In Nation whose traditional lands include parts of 1971, Osborne was abducted by four young white southeastern Quebec and northern New England. men, assaulted and murdered. Sixteen years later, After 25 years making She is unquestionably one of Canada’s foremost one of the four men was convicted of the killing. films, director Alanis documentary filmmakers. Helen Betty Osborne Ininew Education Obomsawin observes: Obomsawin has introduced Canadians to the Resource Centre opened in 2004 and it can accom- “Many of our people are healing, and the untenable conditions First Nations people have modate up to 1,300 students from preschool to country is listening.” endured as a result of the colonization of Turtle grade 12. It also provides university courses enabling (Photo: Cosmos Image) Island. Using a lens focused on truth-telling, she has deconstructed stereotypes and carefully documented the response of Indigenous people to genocidal policies imposed by Canada. Obomsawin’s 50th film for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was launched at the end of 2017. Our People Will Heal is about the promise of a better future, not only for the residents of Norway House Cree Nation, in Manitoba, who are the subject of the documentary, but for all First Nations. It’s a beautifully crafted labour of love detailing a journey to reclaim lost history, language, knowledge, traditions and self-determination. “This was a gift for me to witness this change,” Obomsawin says of the process of creating the film. A consummate storyteller, Obomsawin focuses on the children and youth living in one of the largest First Nations communities in Manitoba. Located 456 kilometres north of Winnipeg, the community grew from a fur trade post at the head of the Nelson River on Lake Winnipeg. Norway House was named by colonists after the Norwegian labourers who constructed the post’s buildings.

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 29 students to earn a degree without having to travel help youth who are at risk, or in crisis, to find to Winnipeg. The building is architecturally influ- meaning in the present and hope for the future. enced by Indigenous traditions, incorporating Obomsawin began her career as a singer-song- circles and natural light into its design. writer and storyteller performing across Canada, “It has a very spiritual feeling,” says Obomsawin the United States and Europe. She recalls singing of the 23-acre site. at a prison in 1961, when it came to her attention We see in the documentary that students love that the majority of the inmate population was their school and also love learning about their Indigenous. That’s when she decided to sit in language, their culture and about treaties. “The on courtroom proceedings to see just how First caring expressed for each other is so beautiful,” Nations, Métis and Inuit men and women were Obomsawin says. “This should be the model for treated by the judicial system. It was an experi- other schools.” ence she found horrifying. Contrast this image with Canada’s legacy of “All I was hearing was guilty, guilty, guilty,” she residential schools. recalls. “There was disrespect towards Indigenous “What colonial schools were teaching us was people from duty counsel [legal aid lawyers], so disgusting,” says Obomsawin. “Our languages the Crown and judges. Indigenous people were were called ‘Satan’s language.’ Now we are able expected to just shut up and accept that they to influence change in the education system. The were going to be found guilty, because the deci- reconciliation process has helped a lot.” sion had been made based on the fact that they The school relies on funding from the province, were Indigenous.” rather than money from Indigenous and Northern Obomsawin wanted to film the inequalities Affairs Canada. Most of the teachers and teaching Indigenous people were expected to endure, and assistants are not only Indigenous but drawn from her work culminated in exposing the federal the local community. The devotion of the teachers government’s mistreatment of children living is profound, as is the support of the school system. on reserve in her monumental documentary We For example, the start time for high school classes Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice. was changed from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., a move In 2007, the First Nations Child and Family Our People Will designed to improve attendance—because, as every Caring Society and the Assembly of First Heal (left) is about parent of a teenager knows, early mornings are Nations filed a complaint against Indian Affairs children of the Norway House Cree tough for teens. Little accommodations like this and Northern Development Canada under the Nation in Manitoba. make it easier for students to succeed. Canadian Human Rights Act. The complaint In Our People Will Heal, Gordon Walker pro- accused the federal government of underfunding Alanis Obomsawin chronicled the Oka vides Norway House youth with an opportunity family and child support services on First Nations Crisis (right) for her to learn Cree traditions tied to the water, land, reserves, creating unequal treatment based solely film Kanehsatake: 270 hunting and fishing through first-hand expe- on the children’s origins. Years of Resistance. (Photo: Library and rience. Walker quietly instills discipline as he Obomsawin filmed the proceedings during Archives Canada) imparts his knowledge and skills. These teachings the eight years it took for the tribunal case to be

30 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS resolved. During this time, the federal govern- army. This powerful piece of living history ment, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, shows First Nations women, men and children made multiple attempts to have the complaint behind the barricades, and it depicts government dismissed. It was also revealed that the federal attempts to manipulate public opinion in favour government withheld over 90,000 key documents, of expanding a golf course on land that had been and that it also investigated Cindy Blackstock, claimed by Mohawks of Kanehsatake. the executive director of the First Nations Child Twenty-five years on, Obomsawin believes that and Family Caring Society and a chief witness historic change is emerging. “This is a revolu- for the applicants. tionary time. People are going back to who they The tribunal heard 72 days of testimony, and on were. It was the appropriation of people’s minds, In her 2014 film, Trick January 26, 2016, the Canadian Human Rights who they are, that I have been fighting against or Treaty?, Alanis Tribunal determined that the Canadian govern- for many, many years. Obomsawin discusses how the government ment had discriminated against First Nations “Drugs and alcohol won’t help. The young need to of Canada has used its children by inequitably funding child welfare ser- go back to themselves, their culture and way of life. influence to weaken vices and by failing to fully implement Jordan’s There is a strong movement going on with young treaty rights. Principle. Jordan’s Principle states that the first people turning back from suicide, and they deserve government agency to come into contact with a a life. They’re returning to traditions, and more First Nations child will provide the services and and more this is how young people are talking.” care needed. It is named after Obomsawin’s documen- Jordan River Anderson, a child taries are educational tools from Norway House Cree “Documentaries play a that are used to help undo Nation in Manitoba who was valuable role in the countless falsehoods and born with complex healthcare misrepresentations that have needs. Jordan died in hospital truthful reconciliation, traditionally filled Canadian while the province of Manitoba as a record of history, history books. In her 2014 film, and Ottawa argued over who and of how lives go to Trick or Treaty?, Obomsawin should pay for his care. provides context for Bill C-45, At 85, Obomsawin main- a better place—a place the omnibus bill introduced tains an enthusiasm for of decolonization. by the Harper government in documentary filmmaking that —alanis obomsawin 2012 that sought to weaken still hasn’t waned. “I’m still as treaty rights. In turn, it gave excited as when I made the rise to the Idle No More first film. I still have a passion for it.” movement and to Attawapiskat First Nation Chief That first film was Christmas at Moose Factory Theresa Spence’s six-week hunger strike in protest (1971). The 13-minute animated film looks at of the persistent disrespect shown for First Nations Christmas in Moose Factory through the eyes by the Conservative federal government. of First Nations children living in the remote “Documentaries play a valuable role in truthful Ontario community located on James Bay. reconciliation, as a record of history, and of how Narrated by a young girl, the film uses a series lives go to a better place—a place of decoloniza- of children’s crayon drawings to give viewers tion. And it’s important to have a place like that.” insights into incidents, big and small, that inform Obomsawin is optimistic. “We are on the road children’s lives in the community. to a place we’ve never been before, to a new age Obomsawin developed a unique protocol for for Indigenous peoples, and it is our youth who establishing relationships with the participants are leading us. This is what I am trying to show in what she calls survival stories. “I meet people in these films.” from the community and do interviews without Obomsawin is currently working on four docu- the camera, just sound,” she explains. “Then mentaries. Fans can look forward to a boxed I document the events as they are happening.” set of her more recent documentaries which In Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), will soon be available from the NFB. Without Obomsawin chronicled the events that took question, Obomsawin’s documentaries continue place during the Oka crisis. She spent 78 days to represent an invaluable part of teaching the and nights filming the armed standoff between history of First Nations peoples and Canada’s Mohawks, the Quebec police and the Canadian colonial legacy. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 31 arts culture FILM & TV BY MAUREEN MEDVED

Fabulous Female Comedy

Female comedy has taken over the just as with love, Notaro’s bio-fictive The diminutive Pamela Adlon, with small screen . Here’s a sampling of mode of storytelling also springs her raspy trucker voice, has been a those who are carving out highly com- unexpectedly and blurs with fiction . The comedy staple for years . Better Things plex comedic roles . radio station’s sound engineer, Kate stars Adlon, who plays a middle-aged Wry, androgynous stand-up comedian (Stephanie Allynne, Notaro’s real-life actress named Sam Fox and dresses like Tig Notaro and Diablo Cody (Juno) have partner), is played with Disney-princess she doesn’t give a shit . She is raising come up with one such TV series, One splendour . Allynne skilfully conveys her three daughters, including a teen who is Mississippi . Notaro, known for docu- own bewilderment over her romantic dating a man in his 30s . menting her struggle with breast cancer interest in Notaro, but she can’t help Sam is described as someone who in her stand-up routines, plays a fictive herself . A highlight of the season has no filter; but why do we use that version of herself—except the TV Notaro involves a more serious storyline . expression? Men speak their minds does radio instead of stand-up . The TV Tig Notaro confronts sexual harassment unapologetically, and we applaud it . And returns to her upper-middle-class south- after the radio producer is found mas- I applaud Adlon’s character for being ern roots, post-breast cancer, to confront turbating at a business meeting . honest in a way that has so often seen the skeletons left behind by her dead women shunned . Sam has a social acu- mother . It’s a dark comedy . Her brother ity that doesn’t conform to the norm . She Remy (Noah Harpster) is a smart, affable says what we all say after a few drinks, big bear who wants to be a new male, or when we’re processing something but is still wrestling with his old male . with a friend or therapist . Her authentically peculiar father (John Celia Imrie plays Adlon’s mother, Rothman), meanwhile, is a somewhere- whose erratic, impulsive behaviour is a on-the-spectrum in-his-50s patriarch who symptom of a form of degenerative brain becomes besotted with the robotic and decline . But, as is the case with one equally peculiar Felicia (Sheryl Lee Ralph) . of Sam’s daughter’s rather amorphous Throughout this odd series, love Web Therapy is a visceral and original gender, we are thankfully never spoon- springs from every direction . And TV series starring Lisa Kudrow. fed explanations . Lisa Kudrow, who played the ditzy Phoebe on the TV series Friends, is starring in two amazing series . The Comeback is the story of a fading TV actress who keeps making reality shows about her comebacks . The other is the edgier and more surreal Web Therapy, in which Kudrow plays a sociopath who conducts therapy online for power, money and, despite herself, purpose . In both series, Kudrow worked with a repertoire group of actors and writ- ers, including the late Robert Michael Morris, who plays best her friend in Web Therapy . Both series have very different, but recognizably flawed protagonists . Kudrow explores warped female ambition with intelligence and compassion, and carries these series masterfully with impeccable timing, nuance and comedic range . Watch for cameos by Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, John Hamm and other big- name actors . Issa Rae launched her career with the web series Awkward Black Girl and Pamela Adlon (seated at right) created Better Things, a series in which she plays an actor named Sam Fox. then went on to star in Broad City and

32 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS arts culture FILM & TV

Brown Girls . Now she appears in HBO’s Insecure . Rae’s mix of straight narrative is interposed with rap songs, in which she works out her inner turmoil in front of the mirror . It’s brilliant, especially when she takes it onstage in a song called “Broken Pussy .” Rae plays Issa, a smart but nerdy hipster who cheats on her earnest boyfriend . Issa then finds herself thrust into the world of singledom, looking to define herself while hanging out with her bestie, a corporate lawyer named Molly (Yvonne Orji) . The show revolves around the contemporary African-American experience of being a young, profes- sional woman and trying to figure it out while relying on friends and looking for love and redemption . It’s funny in all the ways life can be funny and awkward, especially when you’re young and trying to define yourself by cutting a giant sexual swath through a city . Attention should be paid to some amazing music (nod to Solange Knowles as music Issa Rae appears in HBO’s series Insecure, in which she works out life’s problems by consultant) that includes Miss Eaves and composing and performing rap songs. Rico Nasty . Created by Judd Apatow and Lesley Arfin (Vice and Girls, respectively), Love is an edgy series with some real blast-off writing . The hilarious and heartbreak- ing story features Gillian Jacobs as a bad girl . Mickey (Jacobs) meets Gus (Paul Rust), who plays a dorky, smart, nice guy to Jacob’s snarly post-punk chain-smoker—a kind of female, Appearing in the edgy series Love are Paul Love You More, featuring Bridgett Everett as post-feminist James Dean with a snarl Rust and Lesley Arfin. Karen, offers some size diversity to the screen. and cool buckled black boots . The show’s supporting actors include a creepoid radio therapist (Brett Gelman), urbane and edgy Lucille Ball . The British Finally, in the edgy female comedy a slippery and arty co-worker Truman series is a volley of quick sarcastic one- department, is Love You More. Bridgett (Bobby Lee), and overly eager room- liners that never gets tired . Everett plays Karen, a mental health mate Bertie (Claudia O’Doherty) . Love The show follows the two 40-some- worker at a home for people with Down is a dessert tray of brilliantly drawn things as they navigate a relationship syndrome, who spends her time hitting up minor characters . It’s also a beautiful, after a two-night stand that resulted in guys for one-night stands in singles bars . heartbreaking love story that sees two a pregnancy . Even after three seasons, Everett pushes the envelope by being awkward outsiders try to negotiate their this series still walks that delicious vulnerable, capable, caustic and hot in an vulnerability and past hurts to make their tightrope, upon which two caustic unusual (by Hollywood standards, but not relationship work . middle-agers try to make it work, against by real-life standards) way . Everett may Catastrophe is one of the funniest and the odds, while life throws its usual be ignored by mainstream media for her smartest series for real grown-ups on TV . curveballs . Great minor characters bigger-than-fashion-model proportions . Sharon Horan plays Sharon, a woman include Ashley Jensen (Extras), who But, to any viewer who is sick of seeing who is married to Rob (Rob Delaney) . plays Sharon’s best friend . Carrie Fisher only slim women on the screen, watching Played with comic brilliance, Rob is a played Rob’s narcissistic mom in the first Everett play a smart but complex woman contemporized, foul-mouthed and out-of- three years of the series (prior to her who has not been cosmetically altered shape Cary Grant, while Horan is like an death in 2016) . feels like an act of defiance . 

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 33 arts culture MUSIC

SAFE HAVEN a chord with anyone RUTH B familiar with hookup Columbia culture . The velvet- voiced singer offers REVIEW BY EVELYN C . WHITE refl ections on one such In 2015, singer-songwriter Ruth B (the B encounter on the tune stands for Berhe, her last name) became “Mixed Signals”: “The a viral sensation after posting her goodbyes, the hellos, composition “Lost Boy” on the Internet . the I need yous/ The no Propelled by the success of the poignant I don’t every time I start Peter Pan-inspired tune, the 22-year- to close the door .” old Edmonton resident then won a 2017 Berhe takes a more Ruth B won a Juno Award for breakthrough artist of the year. Juno Award for breakthrough artist of empowered stance the year . in “Unrighteous .” In In the liner notes for her debut full- this song, she sings, “No chance we’re her believe she can thrive in a music length album, Safe Haven, she writes: gonna make it . But baby we can fake it . industry dominated by men . “I hope you can fi nd pieces of yourself Cause even though I know you’re not the Here’s hoping that she can help bring buried somewhere in here … the joy, one . This has really been a lot of fun .” about the safe haven she envisions in sadness, confusion, understanding, love, Born to Ethiopian parents who “Young,” when she sings, “Tonight I can heartbreak, or youth of these songs is up immigrated to Canada, Berhe says they hear the laughs . They’re louder than to you .” instilled in her a “relentless ambition .” all the backlash . Tonight I can see the The compositions of Berhe, who also She cites artists such as Lauryn Hill and smiles . And I think that I’ll stay awhile .” plays piano on the 12 tracks, will strike Norah Jones as role models who helped Let’s show Ruth B some love . 

arts culture FICTION

THE GREATEST HITS OF knocks out the lone gunman with an item WANDA JAYNES she has just picked up off the shelf—a BRIDGET CANNING can of coconut milk . Breakwater Books Increasingly in the spotlight, Wanda is suddenly called upon to have a public REVIEW BY LISA PIKE voice in newspaper and television Blending traditional narrative interviews . We are led into the various prose with the language of social corners of her life through refl ections media—all in the idiom of St . John’s, prompted by the gunman event . Unable Newfoundland and Labrador—Bridget to avoid the limelight, Wanda fi nds that Canning’s debut novel is about a she cannot help but scrutinize herself young woman’s journey to greater in new ways, asking: Who am I, really? self-awareness . And is this the life I want to be living? Settling in for the ride, readers of Examining her familial and other per- The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes sonal relationships, Wanda eventually fi nd themselves in the midst of a The novel revolves around a dramatic, decides that it’s time to make some hard personal and communal crisis . When tragic and seemingly characteristic decisions about her life . The dilemma of provincial budget cuts put an end to event of current times: a shooting . holding on versus letting go becomes her teaching job in adult education, Happenstance places Wanda in a local the tension in this novel . Wanda fi nds herself facing not only job grocery store . In an act that makes While the dramatic nature of the loss, but a rupture in the continuity of national news out of the small commun- grocery store incident serves as her life as well . ity and brands her as a hero, Wanda narrative device rather than a subject

34 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS arts culture FICTION

of investigation, the strength of characters’ shortcomings and the novel lies in its portraits of reveals their suffering . Readers individual and communal life . may laugh at these characters, Written in a refl ective and but ultimately, they will sympa- often sardonic tone, the novel thize with them . also works to provide a sense The debut, written in miniature of a young woman’s reality stories, is as much about life on through its formal features . the prairies as it is about human Traditional narrative is inter- connections or the lack thereof . spersed with visuals of text Tension is simmering underneath messages and tweets . The the everyday isolated lives: One interweaving of the language of character reports an accident, social media and the narrative one feeds a stray dog, and of the novel serves to empha- another struggles to fall asleep size thematic issues regarding on a marshmallow mattress in a Wanda’s private and public voice . a cracked vertebra, and his stepsister, Mexican resort . What the characters have A solid novel . a year older than him, is pregnant—and in common is the attempt to put the shat- about as responsible as a fi ve-year-old . tered pieces of their lives back together . SON OF A TRICKSTER Jared is a good guy—he takes care of In these subtle stories, what is left out EDEN ROBINSON everyone, pays the bills, visits his dad carries more weight than what is stated . Vintage Canada in hospital and helps out his elderly The delicate structuring and balance of neighbours . But Jared has yet another the fl ash fi ction can be upset by remov- REVIEW BY NIRANJANA IYER problem now: the membrane between ing a sentence . Ernest Hemingway’s Son of a Trickster is an intricate, scary, universes has begun to dissolve . The iceberg technique is applied and thus, gorgeous story, one that made me double ravens talk to him and while the subject most of the meaning behind the stories back and reread it immediately upon matter starts out small—beginning with lies under the surface . The insight lies fi nishing it . advice to go easy on the Axe deodorant in the gaps between the narratives and Eden Robinson takes as her starting spray—things soon escalate . His world is in the silences between the dialogues, point the richly detailed inner life of a steeped in trauma, violence and poverty the relief or horror that is expressed in a teen boy coming of age in a hostile world but the alternate universe he’s exposed simple “okay .” and then adds to that a parallel universe to is revealed to be brutal and bloody . “Lilian leaned out of the takeout window . centred around First Nations folklore . Will Jared’s generosity—his essen- The sweet smell of her brother’s favourite Her protagonist is part Haisla and part tial niceness—save him? Son of a indulgence stung her nose . ‘I can’t .’ Heiltsuk, like Robinson . Trickster is the fi rst volume of a trilogy, ‘Won’t is the word you were looking for,’ “Our universe is a membrane, a so there will be a wait before we have Lilian’s brother said, slumped down in his hologram, a soap bubble . We don’t go that answer . Meanwhile, read this book car’s bucket seat . . . through the looking glass [emphasis for Robinson’s sharp observations, her ‘Fine . I won’t give you free coffee or free added] . We are the looking glass . Some beautiful imagination and her adeptness sandwiches . . . because you deal drugs . ..’ cultures imagine our world is on the with nuance, as much as her ability to Lilian’s brother cracked up . It was deep back of a turtle, which, you would think, ask the big questions . The writing will laughter, coming straight from the guts, is not literal . But our universe rides a grab you by the throat—and Jared will the kind where it’s possible for a little creature so strange, we don’t have the grab your heart . urine to escape in the process . ‘Do you senses to detect it or the math to explain know how crazy you are?’ he managed to it,” Robinson writes . “Universes are BORDER MARKERS get out between fi ts .” stubbornly separate . Unless you are JENNY FERGUSON Border Markers ignites imagination a Trickster .” NeWest Press and demands that readers actively fi gure Sixteen-year-old Jared’s school life in out how narrators are related (or not), Kitimat, B .C ., mostly revolves around sell- REVIEW BY AVA HOMA and how these characters experience the ing weed cookies, while his home life is Jenny Ferguson’s deftly written novella aftershocks of mishaps . Readers have to about keeping his head down in the face Border Markers reveals the Lansing play an active role in shaping the stories, of his angry, unpredictable mom . Jared’s family’s tragedy through 33 linked fl ash and in putting together the pieces of the family is dysfunctional like Canada is fi ction pieces . The accidental death puzzle to understand how the stories are cold—on the fi rst page, we learn that of a high-school student scatters woven together despite an initial appear- his maternal grandmother has given him unsuspecting family members across ance of disconnection . Ferguson knows a “jar of blood with little animal teeth various borders and even behind bars . how to craft fl ash fi ction and, in the end, rolling around the bottom” as a birthday The stories are delivered with wit and her stories become a novella told from present . Jared’s father is in hospital with concision, as Ferguson exposes her many perspectives .

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 35 New from University of Toronto Press

Ms. Prime Minister Gender, Media, and Leadership by Linda Trimble Ms. Prime Minister explores how gendered representation has played out in the media coverage of female leaders in a number of countries and offers advice on gender strategies to women who aspire to be political leaders.

Getting Past ‘the Pimp’ Management in the Sex Industry edited by Chris Bruckert and Colette Parent This book analyzes the role of third parties in the sex industry, individuals who are neither the client nor the service providers.

Contours of the Nation Making Obesity and Imagining Canada, 1945–1970 by Deborah McPhail Contours of the Nation is the first book which explores obesity in Canada in the post-war period from a critical perspective. No Choice TheTh 300-YYeeara Figight for Abortion on Prrince EdE wawardr Islana d byby Kate MMcKenna | Foreword byy Megag n Leesslliei AwA ara d-wwiinnnini g jojouurnallist Kate McKennan offerrs a fifirrstst-hhand acccoc unnt of Prir nnce Edward Island’s refuusal to briingg aborttion seervr iccess to thhe IIslaannd, and introduces usu to the couourragegeous wwomeen whw o sttrur gggleed for over thirty years to chaangnge tht is.

utorontopress.com FERNWOOD PUBLISHING www.fernwoodpublishing.ca

36 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS arts culture FICTION

COUNTRY OF RED AZALEAS DOMNICA RADULESCU Hachette Book Group

REVIEW BY ANJANA BALAKRISHNAN Country of Red Azaleas is a novel about Lara and Marija, childhood friends born in the former country of Yugoslavia . Lara is Serbian and Marija Bosnian, and grow- ing up, the girls are inseparable . Living in Belgrade and spending their summers in Sarajevo with Marija’s grandparents, it never crosses their minds that their country- men will one day one be on opposing sides of a war . Closer than sisters, the two share everything, including a lover in college . narrative style, where surprising develop- a painter, a jewelry designer, an old nanny, When the Bosnian war begins in 1992, ments and shocking incidents are treated a young au pair, a writer, a patriarch, an their nationalities are pitted against each with the same ambivalence, this novel amateur rabbi, a free-spirited spinster and other . Lara marries and moves to the United leaves the reader with an urge to become many more . Books with multiple charac- States, while Marija decides to go back a stronger person . ters in various geographical settings, and to Sarajevo to become a journalist . In the those with a plot taking place in different years that follow their lives diverge . But with IN MANY WATERS historical periods, tend to be diffi cult to Lara in her cozy Washington life and Marija AMI SANDS BRODOFF follow . But this is certainly not the case in the fearful Bosnia at war, the women Inanna Publications with In Many Waters. The author does an end up in their own circles of hell . The plot outstanding job of keeping readers’ interest meanders towards the question: Who will REVIEW BY MAYA KHANKHOJE at all times through her use of authentic they be when they fi nd each other again? In Many Waters, as the title might suggest, dialogue, a very visual sense of place and Narrated in the voice of Lara, the story is set in different parts of the world that are shrewd psychological insights that make reveals the resilient love between the two adjacent to large bodies of water . Water, as her characters come alive at all times . women . It delves into expectations they a metaphor and as a geographical feature, Ami Sands Brodoff has written an have for themselves, and the ones others plays a very important role in the lives of engaging book about how life prevails have for them . The story travels through the book’s protagonists . This book is billed even in stormy waters . the trauma of two devastating wars, one as a novel but it can also be read as an among nations and the other between a exploration of how mass migrations affect BAD MOTHERS couple . The comforting message of the the lives of individuals—a very topical Regulations, Representations, novel seems to be that people survive . subject in our troubled times . It is also a and Resistance In one heartbreaking thread, Marija history told by people who fl esh out an arid EDITED BY MICHELLE HUGHES MILLER, explains why she dislikes movies about the account of rulers, wars and geopolitical TAMAR HAGER AND REBECCA Bosnian war . She says such fi lms should changes that are meted out by scholars to JAREMKO BROMWICH be made to remember the past so as not to unwary schoolchildren . Demeter Press repeat the same mistakes in the future . But, Cal and Zoe are an American brother- as a survivor of war, she says these fi lms and-sister team who, orphaned in their REVIEW BY KAREN DARRICADES only romanticize the war, in which Serbian youth, set out to discover the mysterious Bad Mothers is a collection of writings and soldiers practiced systematic genocide circumstances of their parents’ demise . In artwork that offers multiple perspectives and raped an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 this quest, they uncover their family hist- and critiques of the “bad mother” label . Bosnian women in “rape camps .” ory as they learn about the history of the Motherhood is an identity that brings with Lara, with her American husband, small Jewish community settled in Malta, it social control, systemic regulations and American citizenship, a promising career a tiny island state in the Mediterranean surveillance over every aspect of a moth- and a darling child, is the golden immi- Sea . Their journey takes them from Malta er’s life . If a mother does not breast-feed, grant standard for the American dream . to Marrakesh, Morocco, and from there breast-feeds too long, consumes drugs She seems to have everything, but her to Montreal, which is located on an island during her pregnancy, does not adhere to life, too, falls apart . Author Domnica in the St . Lawrence River . Did I forget to prenatal care normalized by the medical Radulescu reminds us, “Everybody’s pain mention Puerto Escondido on the Pacifi c establishment, gives up her child for adop- is their own . . . . Nobody’s pains are traded coast of Mexico? That is where their tion and is not self-sacrifi cing in the name for someone else’s pains .” parents met their untimely deaths . of her child, she is a bad mother . Country of Red Azaleas is a story The cast of characters in this book is fas- This anthology covers a lot of ground, of survival . Even with its unassuming cinating: a photographer, a travel journalist, offering academic perspectives, cultural

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 37 arts culture FEMINIST NON-FICTION

representations and some children post-election, each essay in fi rst-hand accounts of ways Nasty Women is a case study in why in which the bad mother the personal is always political . label is applied . “Hatred of the bad mother is still polit- CLAIMING ANISHINAABE ically correct,” as author and Decolonizing the Human Spirit academic Linda Siedel has LYNN GEHL written . “Hospital Archive” University of Regina Press tells the story of an Israeli mother of two who must lie to REVIEW BY DEBRA HURON a government panel to obtain When reading this book, prepare to a legal abortion . In another learn a lot about the Anishinaabeg— piece, an academic researcher the collectivity of Indigenous peoples speaks to imprisoned mothers whose traditional territory extends in Spain, highlighting how a across much of northern Ontario, prison program reinforces white Western ascendance seemed surreal at fi rst, and western Quebec and southern Manitoba . middle-class norms of good mothering . then, much like the “nasty woman” slur, Colonial names for the people include Mothers continue to be scapegoated for seemed less surprising in retrospect . Ojibwe, Oji-Cree and Algonquin . social ills, allowing society and the systems The horribleness of the election Lynn Gehl, PhD, is Anishinaabe-Kwe we create to blame, shame and criminalize outcome—whether realized immediately (Kwe indicates a female gender) with mothers rather than creating systems to or only after a good deal of denial—is roots in the Algonquin Nation of the support them . These systems of oppres- captured in these 23 essays by American Ottawa Valley . She has spent the last 30 sion disproportionately impact Indigenous writers and activists who display varying years fi ghting the government of Canada women, whose parenting habits are often degrees of despair, defi ance and deter- over one of the many forms of sex used to judge them as unfi t by child-protec- mination . Nasty Women showcases a discrimination in the Indian Act . In April tion services, leading to the destruction of diverse range of voices and experiences 2017, she won her case and joined forces individuals’ and communities’ well-being . from an impressive roster of feminist with feminist and Indigenous activists, In one story, a young Cree mother from writers and activists . along with senators, to push for even Saskatoon learns of her HIV-positive status Mary Kathryn Nagle shows how, for greater reforms aimed at recognizing in a prenatal exam and is told she is the Native American women, Trump can be women ancestors in the Indian Act’s defi nition of “mother-risk .” Later, after seen as similar to the white presidents registry . In November 2017, the federal losing custody of her 18-month-old son, she who came before him, while Sarah Jaffe Liberal government vowed to consult and nurtures houseplants in order to prove that talks about the working class, and its often eventually to act on the issues at stake . she can be responsible . contradictory relationship with conserv- In Claiming Anishinaabe, Gehl melds the Too often, a child’s physical and mental ative economics . Randa Jarrar, Zerlina personal with the political, the philosoph- health is viewed as a symptom of bad Maxwell, Nicole Chung, Kera Bolonik and ical with the spiritual . She offers readers a mothering . This book points to the need to others discuss racism, anti-Semitism, and primer on Indigenous knowledge systems, support mothers, rather than blaming them . the rising tide of xenophobia across the beliefs and practices that have informed United States . Samantha Irby tackles the her long struggle for human rights . NASTY WOMEN: LGBTQ experience in rural America, which “Prior to colonial intrusion, my ances- Feminism, Resistance, and is known for its pro-Trump sentiments . A tors were born into a system of deep Revolution in Trump’s America powerful piece by Rebecca Solnit shows cultural meaning, material wellness, and EDITED BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY how misogyny shaped the politics of the a good life, and thus a place where their AND KATE HARDING 2016 election at nearly every level . spirits were nurtured, [while] mine was Macmillan Publishers This intersectional approach captures the criminalized . I blame Canada .” individual perspectives of each writer, but Published at a time when reconcili- REVIEW BY AMBER TROSKA it never forgets how each piece fi ts into the ation has entered the mindset of many “Such a nasty woman .” bigger picture of global politics and femin- Canadians, Gehl’s book leans heavily on It was a sexist insult hurled by Donald ism . Especially poignant is the essay by Jill a more diffi cult proposition: the need to Trump at Hilary Clinton during one of the Filipovic, author of The H-Spot: The Feminist decolonize from layers of cultural and U .S . presidential debates and it became Pursuit of Happiness,” about the impact political oppression . She describes what a rallying cry for feminist outrage . Then, of U .S . policy decisions abroad and the an Indigenist approach looks like and like many of the writers in Nasty Women: increasing danger of anti-choice rhetoric . chronicles how Indigenous knowledge Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Whether looking at identity politics, and practices now sit at the centre of her Trump’s America, I found myself in tears disability, reproductive rights or online mis- life and her activism . on the night of Democratic presidential ogyny, or simply detailing the overwhelming Gehl has much to teach us . Inside candidate Clinton’s epic defeat . Trump’s sadness of comforting shell-shocked this slim volume, you’ll have a chance to

38 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS arts culture FEMINIST NON-FICTION

appreciate how the Great Law of studies . She studied the recom- the Anishinaabeg points Canada mendations and, when a women’s toward a holistic way of making centre opened nearby, offered to decolonization a vibrant reality . teach a free course on the history of women’s legal issues . In law MANUFACTURING school, she conducted a survey URGENCY of women lawyers for a course . The Development Industry She found that women’s histories and Violence against Women shouted discrimination but the CORINNE L . MASON women themselves denied it . A University of Regina Press classmate’s separate survey of law fi rms found that 40 percent of the REVIEW BY LISA TREMBLAY fi rms freely admitted to discriminat- Feminists may be relieved to ing against women candidates . learn that the United States, the Dranoff’s own challenges to World Bank and the United Nations claim against women through targeted invest- fi nd a place to article convinced her she to priorize violence against women in their ments and interventions . was better off being her own boss . As international development work . However, As Mason eloquently describes it, all a one-person law fi rm, she practised as Brandon University professor Corinne three organizations manufacture a sense every kind of law except criminal law . Mason argues, it’s important to under- of urgency about violence against women As a feminist, she also participated in stand how these powerful development in order to garner support for their own the founding of the National Association actors defi ne and tackle the issue . objectives . Their top-down approaches of Women and the Law, a network of Mason applies transnational feminist collapse and contain complex problems, women lawyers and law students . In theory, critical race theory and post-de- impose Western values and reinforce the 1974, the Ontario Law Reform Commission velopment thinking in her analysis of their power of the development industry as proposed the principle that marriage be work . She describes how each organization the global problem solver and rescuer . regarded as an economic partnership, narrowly defi nes violence against women As both the recent sexual impropriety and that property acquired during a and links it with its own goals and solutions, scandal at Oxfam Britain and Mason’s marriage should be divided equally upon rather than with transnational and local own research demonstrate, this approach divorce . As revolutionary as this principle women’s analyses and approaches . simply “reproduces the status quo more seemed, decades of discovery and fi ne For instance, former U .S . secretary than it changes relations of power .” tuning would still lie ahead . of state Hillary Clinton brought violence Mason’s scholarly book contributes Dranoff spent her career working for against women to the forefront of foreign greatly to our understanding of the efforts fair support for women and children when policy by tying it to the concept of national to address violence against women globally marriages ended . She wrote op-eds, security . Gender inequality in under- and is a valuable resource for anyone gave broadcast interviews, worked out developed countries is linked to confl ict, involved in international development work . positions and lobbied and presented briefs insecurity and terrorism, thereby justifying to legal and legislative bodies . When at American intervention as well as the FAIRLY EQUAL last the Ontario government adopted its promotion of that country’s solutions . Lawyering the Feminist Revolution Family Law Act and a Custody Orders The World Bank, on the other hand, LINDA SILVER DRANOFF Enforcement Act in 1986, Dranoff received states that violence against women blocks Second Story Press due recognition for her indefatigable economic growth and progress in under- efforts . In 2004 she received a Governor developed countries . Ignoring the impact REVIEW BY PENNEY KOME General’s Award in Commemoration of the of global economic restructuring on Third Linda Silver Dranoff’s calling helped to Persons Case, and in 2012 she was admit- World women, the World Bank attempts to change family law in Canada . ted to the Order of Canada . empower and emancipate them through Dranoff became a lawyer at about the Fairly Equal is enjoyable to read: entrepreneurial projects, in order to over- same time that family law became a spe- polished, concise and written in a conver- come their traditional roles and involve cialty, following the passage of Canada’s sational style with meticulous attention to them in the market economy . fi rst federal Divorce Act . Her memoir, detail . The author shares some details of The United Nations emphasizes extreme Fairly Equal: Lawyering the Feminist her personal life, including how her par- forms of violence against women in the Revolution, chronicles her role in shaping ents and extended family helped to raise Third World in its campaigns . Violence Canadian family law . her daughter Beth while she attended law against women tends to be framed as One of 14 women in her law class of 300, school . One of the book’s most moving interpersonal, and as unconnected to col- Dranoff was a divorced single mother . The moments depicts Dranoff’s graduation onialism, imperialism, occupation and war . Royal Commission on the Status of Women from law school, when tiny Beth raced Women’s painful experiences of violence released its fi nal report in 1970, during down the long aisle to embrace her are used by the UN to uproot violence Dranoff’s second year of undergraduate mother, to the crowd’s applause .

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 39 arts culture FEMINIST NON-FICTION

Today, Dranoff’s blow-by-blow descrip- of confl ict, religious rights prevail over tions could serve as a manual for how to women’s rights . lobby for social change . Let’s never forget This clearly written, well-documented that our current state of legal, fi nancial book chronicles the life of an Indian village and career independence has been girl whose arranged marriage took her to hard-won—and within living memory—by the United States and Canada, and then feminist champions like Dranoff . to an outstanding career as a renowned sociologist and feminist . It is the story of CROSSING THE LAXMAN REKHA Dhruvarajan herself, a woman who, by One Woman’s Struggles against defying Hindu social norms and while fac- Gender, Racial and Ethnic Bias ing a racist and sexist work environment, VANAJA DHRUVARAJAN obtained a doctorate from a prestigious Self-published university in Chicago and later wrote several academic books and papers . She REVIEW BY MAYA KHANKHOJE achieved all this while also enduring a love- In the Ramayana, an ancient Indian epic Laxman Rekha is actually a boundary that less marriage . depicting the vicissitudes of King Rama all Hindu wives, whether traditional or Dhruvarajan, who died in December and his wife Sita while they lived in exile modern, have to respect . Such a line, she 2017, was an adjunct professor at Carleton in the forest, the Laxman Rekha is an argues, is meant to contain women and University in the Pauline Jewett Institute for imaginary circle drawn around Sita’s to make them dependent on the males in Women’s Studies . She also loved to cook, house to ensure her safety when her their family, thus ensuring the survival of was a parent and an active participant in husband is away . Sita is told not to cross patriarchy in an ever-changing world . In community and temple events . that line, for her own protection . fact, even though the Indian constitution And that is the very point Dhruvarajan In Crossing the Laxman Rekha, scholar guarantees equality to all religions and, makes . While men tend to feel entitled to Vanaja Dhruvarajan argues that the more recently, to women as well, in case private fulfi llment and professional success,

NEW FROM DEMETER PRESS Feminist Publishing on Mothering, Reproduction, Sexuality and Family

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40 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS arts culture FEMINIST NON-FICTION

women must still too often choose between them . This holds true both in traditional soci- eties and modern ones, the author believes . It is only the modalities that differ . This book might break your heart, but it will certainly strengthen your resolve to work for change .

HEALTH ADVOCACY INC. How Pharmaceutical Funding Changed the Breast Cancer Movement SHARON BATT UBC Press

REVIEW BY DEBORAH OSTROVSKY and of the possibility of returning to this the end of that year, shelters had opened Do not let the academic aura of Health golden age of activism . in Aldergrove, B .C ., and in Edmonton, Advocacy Inc., Sharon Batt’s second book Calgary, Saskatoon and Vancouver . on the politics of breast cancer (the fi rst RUNAWAY WIVES AND There was no precedent, no road map, was the 1992 book Patient No More), fool ROGUE FEMINISTS but the women had passion and commit- you into thinking that it isn’t written for The Origins of the Women’s Shelter ment . Some of them went into the work everyone: breast cancer patients, journal- Movement in Canada knowing what they were facing; others ists, policy-makers, physicians and activists . MARGO GOODHAND didn’t . But they all knew that they had to do Batt, an award-winning scholar, a Fernwood Books something to help women who had nowhere co-founder of Breast Cancer Action to go when escaping their partner’s Quebec and a former editor of one of REVIEW BY AMANDA LE ROUGETEL violence . “We were these ‘la-la feminists’ Canada’s earliest feminist magazines, Violence against women is a persistent who thought we should just get together Branching Out, has lived through virtually problem in Canada: Statistics show that one and help each other,” says Lynn Zimmer, every health policy decision described in woman is killed by her partner every fi ve a founding member of Interval House . The these pages . She offers an intricate analy- days, and in 2014, 96,000 girls and women stories vary by community but the con- sis of Canada’s fl ourishing feminist breast were victims of violence . Indigenous sistent theme is courage and stamina . cancer movement, which was a burgeon- women face three times the risk of violence Goodhand blends personal stories ing political force prior to being tossed to compared to non-Indigenous women . with facts, fi gures and analysis in the 154 the sidelines as neo-liberal policies swept Today, 625 shelters for battered women pages of this slim volume . Read Runaway across Western governments . Here is exist across Canada . Horrifyingly, on a Wives to learn the history of Canada’s the complex story of activists and patient single day in 2016, 73 percent of women and shelter movement and to be inspired by groups who were once called to the table children needing shelter were turned away . the women who built it . by our government to share their expertise, In Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists, then were abruptly cut loose from funding Margo Goodhand, journalist and a former THE TEEN SEX TRADE earmarked for advocacy as health policy editor at the Edmonton Journal and the My Story shifted . In the aftermath, an alarming Winnipeg Free Press, tells the story of the JADE BROOKS number of patient groups (if not most) have ordinary women who built an extraordinary Formac Publishing accepted big pharma money to survive . network of shelters across Canada for Health Advocacy Inc. occasionally feels women fl eeing violence . In the foreword, REVIEW BY LISA TREMBLAY like a Russian novel . It has plot twists and Lee Lakeman, of Vancouver’s 40-year- In her short memoir The Teen Sex Trade: dissidents whose tactics and rebellions old Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, My Story, Jade Brooks, a young Black against drug companies are nothing short describes this network as “the envy of poet from Nova Scotia, describes how she of heroic . Yet Batt eschews sensational women’s movements around the world .” got into “the game” and how she got out . tropes about the evils of big pharma in In the early 1970s, the second wave of Born into a large family, Brooks writes favour of interviews and archives describ- Canadian feminism was in its early days . about the poverty, addictions and domes- ing the gradual demise of the breast The Royal Commission on the Status of tic violence that surrounded her . After cancer movement, one press conference, Women delivered its report, the Abortion being removed from her parents’ home one phone call, one board meeting at a Caravan travelled from Vancouver to and separated from her siblings, she lived time . Somehow, throughout the book, Ottawa, the National Action Committee on in a series of foster and group homes in Batt possesses an inherent optimism . She the Status of Women was formed and the which she was sexually abused . provides a detailed map of the country’s country’s fi rst women’s shelter, Interval School wasn’t a safe place for Brooks, once-thriving breast cancer movement House, opened in Toronto in April 1973 . By who was a straight-A student . As early

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 41 arts culture FEMINIST NON-FICTION

as elementary school, she was I’M THE GIRL WHO teased about her hair and her WAS RAPED complexion and bullied for being MICHELLE HATTINGH Black . She dropped out of school Inanna Publications when she was a teenager . Brooks pinned her hopes on REVIEW BY MANJEET BIRK boyfriends . However, the guy I’m the Girl Who Was Raped she fell for turned violent and is a memoir by South African expected her to prove her love Michelle Hattingh about her by working the streets and giving experience of rape and its him the money . Afraid and alone, aftermath . This is a timely book in Brooks gave in . In her book she a #MeToo world where it seems writes about how she was moved as though every other headline from one big city in Canada to is exposing a seedy underbelly another to sell herself . of power-hungry men and the She hung on by a thread . Forced to work member of the community while driving a women they have victimized throughout long hours, she entered a dissociative state car on Shabbat . Mirvis takes mincing steps, their careers . when she was with clients . Her boyfriend like refusing to let down her hair in the Despite the growing frequency of rape frequently choked her till she blacked out . mikvah, a Jewish cleansing bath to demar- reportage, I still felt incredibly self-con- Despite overwhelming trauma, Brooks cate her days of “impurity .” In a humiliating scious while reading this book in public found a path out . A friend invited her to a ritual, women are made to insert a clean places . The title—including the word program offered by a group called LOVE piece of cloth in their vagina to bring to the “raped,” which appears in bold, broken red (Leave Out Violence), where Brooks had rabbi for inspection of potential menstrual letters on the cover—looks powerful and the opportunity to refl ect . The experience stains before being deemed kosher, like severe . I could feel the sideways glances helped her to realize that her boyfriend ritually slaughtered meat . of those around me who appeared to be didn’t love her . Brooks escaped within Her baby steps towards her own truth, as uncomfortable with the subject matter of a couple years, returned to school and she admits her doubts, illustrate the strug- the book . graduated on the honour role . gle between feminism and Orthodoxy that Yet this response to the word “rape” Brooks wrote her story to educate we acknowledge in Judaism and its cousin is exactly why we need more books that young women and to prevent them religions, especially Catholicism and Islam . explore women’s honest experiences of from falling into the same trap she did . The ties of belonging to a community where rape and its consequences . Although the Her story also describes the impacts of being good assures acceptance, love, pre- book’s jarring cover would make my hand racism . Hopefully it will also help Nova dictability and other rewards, are stronger shake every time I picked it up, the inside Scotia address prostitution, which, Brooks than the unknown possibilities of choice, is actually easy to read and is fi lled with a says, has become normalized . which include failure and loneliness . soft, comfortable intimacy . As a non-Orthodox Jew, I experienced Hattingh describes how her thinking THE BOOK OF SEPARATION: my own version of separation when I came was affected by the assault, and she A Memoir out in support of Palestinian rights and, discusses the ways in which rape myths TOVA MIRVIS later, the Boycott Divestment, Sanctions clouded her psyche . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt movement . Looking back, I took as long Yet I couldn’t help but wonder how a as Mirvis to challenge the presence of the white woman who was raped by a dark- REVIEW BY BONNIE SHERR KLEIN elephant in the room, and I was astonished skinned man could write about rape in Tova Mirvis, a privileged 40-year-old to be shunned by former friends and even South Africa without providing an essen- woman—an acclaimed novelist, in fact— co-congregants in my Progressive Except tial racialized context to power relations in decides to give up the Orthodox Judaism Palestine (PEP) Jewish renewal synagogue . that country—one that includes an analy- in which she has been raised and leave The broader question for feminists sis of the long-term effects of apartheid her marriage with three children in order is the challenge of choice . There are upon its social fabric . While the author to become closer to her true self . A brave no guarantees of happiness when we talks openly about her class privilege and tale of feminist liberation, right? refuse accepted norms and set out for the her background, which included horse- Wrong . This journey happens in excruci- unknown . But if feminism has left us with back riding, elaborate parties, educational atingly slow and painful increments as one clear value, that value is our right to opportunities and travel, she does not Mirvis punctures loopholes in the intricate choose how we want to live or die, and to analyze the origins of that privilege within fabric of Jewish Orthodoxy . As a Jewish accept the consequences . a broader historic context of apartheid . feminist, I was impatient with her fears, her Choice does not come cheaply, but it’s This said, I’m the Girl Who Was Raped compromising the on-again, off-again ritual what we’ve fought for and continue to hold is nonetheless a brave book . Every rape wig or hair covering, and her elaborate dear . Mirvis’s story is worth reading for the story is an important one and is worthy of choreography to avoid being seen by a complexities and the cost of choice . being told, heard and shared . 

42 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS arts culture AUTHOR INTERVIEW Big Pharma and Breast Cancer Long-time health activist and author Sharon Batt’s new book looks at how corporate cash has harmed women’s health advocacy.

by DEBORAH OSTROVSKY

HERIZONS: You started out as an activist doing grass- roots work in the breast cancer and women’s health movement. Then you became an academic. Such different worlds! SHARON BATT: Yes, they are different worlds, but people with a commitment to social justice often straddle them. For me, the pull of activism is about engaging in social issues that really mat- ter, and the pull of academia is about wanting to understand, at a deep level, the forces that underlie injustice and social change. My own diagnosis of breast cancer, and the example of the AIDS movement, brought me back to feminist activism in the community. Involvement in this movement was more intense, because you saw women you cared about sicken and die, and you knew that you could be next. Your transition from activist to scholar gave you the opportunity to study the movement in which you had been an important leader. Did studying the movement that you helped to start confi rm what you already knew? Any surprises? SHARON BATT: The insights were explanatory more than confi rming. I had two years as the Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax at a time when I was con- fused about the movement. At the outset, it had seemed so progressive, so necessary. By the end of the decade, many groups had adopted corporate Photo: Jenine Panagiotakos Photo:

Continued on page 46

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Herizons PAC Ad-Spr18.indd 2 2018-05-09 10:08 PM arts culture AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Continued from page 43 movement, which had formed ties with progressive people in government and raised the alarm about harm- trappings. They called their leaders CEOs; they met in ful drugs and devices, especially in reproduction. But boardrooms instead of church basements or people’s homes. that support seemed to collapse without warning and And the movement was internally divided. When you are without explanation. Instead, the grant system ended, as engaged as I was, you don’t have a lot of time to reflect. and we were encouraged to form so-called corporate So I had lived through that transformation in how groups “partnerships” with the private sector. That was a star- functioned, but I didn’t understand the policy shifts that tling turnaround from the checks and balances where were driving some of the changes. the government stood with citizen advocates to ensure I had a second two-year academic appointment, at that powerful industries didn’t put people’s health at Dalhousie University. Both these appointments brought risk in the interests of fast and fat profits. me into contact with feminist scholars who were analyzing the global political shift to the right and what it meant This gutting of support for citizen advocacy and gov- to the radical movements of the ’60s and ’70s. I began ernment regulation happened without governments to understand the specific policies that had changed and acknowledging outright what was going on. In fact, the the political-economic ideology that was reshaping whole stealth tactics and Orwellian language used to blindside societies, including Canada. Pieces began to fit together. the public are quite stunning. In the daily life of the groups, the pharmaceuti- What Orwellian language? cal industry appeared as the disrupting force, but the SHARON BATT: People in groups talked about not saying industry could never have been as the “A-word,” meaning advocacy, effective as it was without the ideo- for fear we could lose the charitable logical changes that took hold in status that helps groups raise funds government and in the medical com- “I see my analysis as a in the community. Alliances between munity. The government had been case history of how patient groups with tiny budgets and downsized and reorganized along one health sector was multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical business lines. Medical research was torn apart and how companies were termed “partner- increasingly about finding patent- able products, less about changing neo-liberal policies ships,” and patient representatives the social determinants of health, thwarted its social- on government panels were called like poverty and discrimination. “stakeholders,” which is a misnomer. justice aims.” The pharmaceutical companies You talk about the deregulation of —sharon batt were all over the groups with money, industry harming women’s health. and free lunches, and trips. That SHARON BATT: Yes. In the 1990s, many people in gov- was suddenly okay with the leaders ernment and in medicine supported the breast cancer in government and the medical communities, some of movement as a force for change—they encouraged us to whom were on the same bandwagon. When investiga- critique the system. That concept of civil society critique tive journalist Nick Regush wrote a scathing exposé and advocacy was embedded in postwar thinking about about the Meme breast implant, a shoddy product put citizenship in Canada. The assumption was that govern- inside women’s bodies without adequate testing, the ments needed to listen to legitimate grievances from federal deputy minister of health asked to meet with different sectors of the population. him. Regush recalled that she told him that crusad- This kind of thinking on the part of the federal govern- ers who criticized industry were now “obso,” meaning ment was very evident in the early breast cancer movement, obsolete. The new government vision was to partner between 1991 and 1993. A House of Commons com- with industry. mittee held hearings for a year on breast cancer and on a At parliamentary hearings, women testified about defective breast implant called the Meme, and this was horrible infections and autoimmune reactions from followed by a national policy conference on breast cancer. the Meme. A government scientist named Pierre Blais We—patients—were sought out to voice our concerns! published scholarly papers documenting the problems and lost his job at the Health Protection Branch for So what happened? speaking out. By the end of the 1990s, the Health SHARON BATT: Early support for breast cancer activism Protection Branch had been rebranded the Health followed the same model as in the women’s health Products and Food Branch.

46 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS arts culture AUTHOR INTERVIEW

It’s hard to believe that there isn’t some sort of conspiracy. Just that were furious about the unethical behaviour of the as activism was gaining more traction, then big pharma’s pharmaceutical industry with DES, and with drugs and pressure started. devices more generally. SHARON BATT: Let’s not use the word conspiracy. I try to You mentioned male physicians. Joel Lexchin, whose show the ways neo-liberalism loads the dice to redis- critique of the pharmaceutical industry dates back tribute power and the effects this has had on health to the early ’80s, was a major ally to many women’s activism—which I see as distinct from a conspiracy. health groups. The wide net also brought in activists Certainly, women have traditionally been more active like Wendy Armstrong from the Canadian Association than men as guardians of the family’s health. Women have of Consumers and Janine O’Leary Cobb in Montreal, founded and led social organizations to protect health, whose newsletter for women in menopause, A Friend the environment, consumer rights, and to oppose poverty Indeed, critiqued the over-selling of hormone therapy and war. All of these causes can threaten big business. On to women in mid-life. Feminist academics like Ruth top of that, more women than men are poor, so a system Cooperstock and Abby Lippman were movement that redistributes wealth upwards will disproportionately leaders, Ruth with her groundbreaking analysis of the hurt women. mood-altering drugs prescribed for And women’s organizations have problems rooted in social condi- always had a mix of women pushing tions, and Abby for her important for systemic change as well as more work in the geneticization of health conservative or socially privileged problems. Sari Tudiver, from the women. The breast cancer movement international development group is no different. I see my analysis as a Inter Pares in Ottawa, was part of case history of how one health sector a collective that produced a play was torn apart and how neo-liberal called Side Effects, based on women’s policies thwarted its social-justice actual experiences with drugs in aims. It’s not a claim that women’s Canada and Bangladesh, that led health movements in particular suf- to the founding of the Canadian fered more. Other movements, like Women’s Health Network, which HIV/AIDS, which initially was male- Madeline Boscoe directed for two led, are dancing with big pharma, too. decades. We need more analyses that take Once I start naming these women gender, class, racialized identities and and the amazing work they did, I the intersections of these and other In her new book Health Advocacy, Inc., Sharon Batt examines the breast can’t stop. categories into account. I’d like the cancer movement’s relationship to story I tell in Health Advocacy, Inc. to pharmaceutical companies. Reading Health Advocacy, Inc., I stimulate more discussions of how felt—perhaps oddly—vindicated. I’ve neo-liberalism changed other sectors been in boardrooms watching breast and movements over time. cancer activists in tears. They knew that the decision not to Your book has incredible feminist heroines and some male accept pharma funding would condemn their work, in some physicians, too. ways, to near obscurity. We are up against Goliath. Now I understand we were being squeezed out. Yet the entrenched SHARON BATT: One of the things I realized in my research ethics of refusal of pharma money have survived. Ethics will was the overlap between the women’s health activism save women’s health advocacy and save lives. of the ’70s and ’80s and the ethics debates over drugs and pharma funding that took place within the breast SHARON BATT: That’s a great and optimistic note to end cancer movement. Women like Anne Rochon Ford, on. I’m so glad that the book helped put some of your Barbara Mintzes and Shirley and Harriet Simand had own experiences in perspective. To pull ourselves out all been involved in DES Action, which Shirley and of the slump that women’s health activism has been Harriet founded after they realized Harriet suffered in, I believe we need to build a new intergenerational, from the reproductive problems caused by her mother intersectional movement. If my book helps kick-start taking the drug DES during pregnancy. DES Action some of the conversations that will get us there, I will was part of an international network of women’s groups be thrilled. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2018 47 ON THE EDGE BY LYN COCKBURN

#METOO BRINGS OUT #MEANTOO

Of course there’s a backlash against #MeToo. Did we a one-on-one meeting with your male boss, doctor, priest think for one moment that men who worship at the or professor, be sure to bring along your husband, brother, Church of the Patriarchy would view this movement the man next door and a good male lawyer. That’s four as anything less than sacrilegous? Of course we didn’t. witnesses. Should be enough. You’ll likely lose your job, Nonetheless, it is important to understand the length and but that probably would have happened anyway if you breadth of that backlash, so here is an overview of some had complained about your boss putting his hand up your of the more prominent anti-#MeToo hashtags cluttering skirt. So never mind. up Twitter. #ImConfused is the one where men ask confused ques- #WitchHunt owes its prominence to actor Liam tions. For example, a gentleman on a comment thread I Neeson. In a recent interview, he of the lovely Irish accent made the mistake of reading asked confusedly, “Does this endeavoured to have it both ways by stating that, while he mean I’ll lose my job if I hug a co-worker when she does personally himself considers the movement “healthy,” it has great work?” “Will I be accused of harassment if I tell the “sparked a bit of a witch hunt.” Then he appeared to look receptionist she looks pretty in her new blouse,” inquired under his chair as though it were on fire. Many other men another perplexed chap. using this hashtag are not so diplomatic. Instead, they insist #DeathOfFlirting. More than a few men are insisting that, with the possible exception of Harvey Weinstein and that a mere pat on the butt is an okay gesture. Matt Lauer, Larry Nassar, the U.S. gymnastics team doctor implicated late of NBC’s Today show, was so addicted to this practice in more than 300 sexual abuse allegations, most abuse that he had a button installed under his desk with which allegations are the products of wild-eyed, man-hating fem- he could lock his office door to prevent a woman leav- inists carrying cord wood and fiery torches. ing his office until he’d finished “flirting,” which often #StopPlayingTheVictimCard is the evil twin of included exposing his genitals to women. #StopPlayingTheRaceCard. These sorry siblings trivialize #TheEndOfRomanceAndCivilization. This is even the reality of sexism and racism while sidetracking women more serious than the imminent demise of flirting. into endlessly explaining and justifying their cause. Evidently, unless men are permitted to continue harassing #WhatAbout… is a hashtag followed by any of the women for sex, we will end up in a prudish, sterile society following words: men, prostate cancer, men, poverty, in which the population figures will significantly drop and men, global warming, men, the economy, men. And it is the world will end designed to deflect attention from sexual abuse. #OnlyUglyWomen. This one purports that only unat- One of my favourites is #PenceIsRight. The American tractive women complain about harassment. Better yet, VP is not just famous for insisting that Trump is sane. only feminist man-haters, who are all ugly. Attractive No, indeed, he has often publicly stated that he will women evidently like to be harassed and raped. not have dinner or any kind of private meeting with a #OnlySomeMen. There are herds of men out there woman unless his wife, who he calls “Mother,” is present. who write online treatises about the injustice committed He says this practice ensures he will never be accused by women who keep using the noun “men” when referring of sexual impropriety. Never mind that it also excludes to workplace perps. They insist that every sentence should women from the inner circles of power, much like that old begin with “Some men...” or “Not all men ...”. However, practice of not inviting women employees to the weekend it’s probably just a rumour that #NotAllLocksmiths (see company golf games. the reference to Matt Lauer above) is about to hit Twitter. #NoWitnesses. Evidently, no accusation of sexual Regardless of their wording, all of the backlash hashtags, misconduct is valid unless there are witnesses other than mansplains and self-righteous outrage have the same pur- the victim; no such witnesses means the victim who pose. They all tell women to sit down and shut up.

witnessed the events is lying. So the next time you have Not going to happen, because #TimesUp. 

48 SPRING 2018 HERIZONS Aren’t they worth it?

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