PINK SHMINK MINNIE BRUCE PRATT SEX AND WHY RIBBONS OCCUPY THE SINGLE JUST DON’T CUT IT CAPITALISM WOMAN

WOMEN’S NEWS & FEMINIST VIEWS | Winter 2012 | Vol. 25 No. 3 BUY CANADIAN THETHE LURELURE OFOF BONNIEBONNIE MARINMARIN ARTIST EXPLORES GENDER AND DESIRE

RADICAL HOMEMAKERS MOVEMENT OR MYTH? BITCHIN’ ’BOUT $6.75 Canada/U.S. STITCHIN’ CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT CRAFTER Publications Mail Agreement No. 40008866; Display until March 30, 2012 CAW Full (bleed) Win-12.indd 1 11-11-28 2:03 PM WINTER 2012 / VOLUME 25 NO. 3 news SEEING RED OVER PINK ...... 6 by Amanda Le Rougetel

CAMPAIGN UPDATES ...... 8 THE POET VS. THE PROFITEERS AN INTERVIEW WITH MINNIE BRUCE PRATT ...... 11 by Joy Parks 11 features CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT CRAFTER ...... 14 The knitting trend has hit Canada by storm. So what’s a feminist to do: Join the rebel fibre movement or cast dire warnings that women will soon be barefoot in the kitchen? by Deborah Ostrovsky BASTARDS AND BULLIES ...... 20 Dorothy Palmer’s debut novel, When Fenelon Falls, features Jordan, a young girl who is adopted and disabled. The protagonist reflects some of Palmer’s experiences about what it is like to be adopted and disabled. by Niranjana Iyer

THE LURE OF BONNIE MARIN: LESSONS IN TRANSGRESSIONS ...... 24 Visual artist Bonnie Marin freely mixes gender, race and even species in erotic environments that are part middle class 1950s normalcy and part spectacles of perversity. 14 by Shawna Dempsey HOW FEMINISM CAN IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE . . . .28 Two new books about sex and politics paint a provocative picture of feminist dating 45 years after the personal was declared to be political. Writers Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Jaclyn Friedman take the theory to the next level. by Mandy van Deven

FAMILY PORTRAITS ...... 34 Julia Ivanova credits her outsider status as a advantage in making documentaries. Born in the Soviet Union, she immigrated to Canada in 1995 and has been drawn to telling unique stories about families across borders. by Brittany Shoot RADICAL HOMEMAKER STIRS THE POT ...... 36 Shannon Hayes set out to create sustainable work that would bring together her degrees in agriculture and community development. Radical Homemakers maps her view that domestic work can be an ecologically driven choice that undermines consumer culture. by Tina Vasquez 28 HERIZONS WINTER 2012 1 VOLUME 25 NO. 3

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MANAGING EDITOR: Penni Mitchell FULFILLMENT AND OFFICE MANAGER: Phil Koch ACCOUNTANT: Sharon Pchajek BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Ghislaine Alleyne, Phil Koch, Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhard, Valerie Regehr EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Ghislaine Alleyne, Gio Guzzi, Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhard ADVERTISING SALES: Penni Mitchell (204) 774-6225 DESIGN: inkubator.ca RETAIL INQUIRIES: Disticor (905) 619-6565 PROOFREADER: Phil Koch 47 COVER: Bonnie Marin, Fishing Lure, oil paint and collage (2008) HERIZONS is published four times per year by HERIZONS Inc. in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. One-year subscription price: $27.50 arts & ideas plus $1.92 GST = $29.42 in Canada. Subscriptions to U.S. add $6.00. International subscriptions add $9.00. Cheques or money orders MUST-HAVE MUSIC ...... 38 are payable to: HERIZONS, PO Box 128, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 12 by Dinah Thorpe and The Five White Guys; CANADA R3C 2G1. Ph (204) 774-6225. The Mosaic Project by Terri Lyne Carrington; SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES: [email protected] Lucky Tonight by Romi Mayes; Light of Day by Amanda EDITORIAL INQUIRIES: [email protected] Rheaume; Doing It For the Chicks by Kate Reid. ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: [email protected] WEBSITE: www.herizons.ca WINTER READING ...... 40 HERIZONS is indexed in the Canadian Periodical Index and heard Missed Her by Ivan E. Coyote; Revenge by Taslima on Voiceprint. Nasrin; Various Positions by Martha Schabas; Irma Voth by GST #R131089187. ISSN 0711-7485. Miriam Toews; Missing Matisse by Jan Rehner; The purpose of HERIZONS is to empower women; to inspire hope The Kid by Sapphire; The Odious Child by Carolyn Black; and foster a state of wellness that enriches women’s lives; to build King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes; The Love Queen awareness of issues as they affect women; to promote the of Malabar by MerrilyWeisbord; Feminism for Real: strength, wisdom and creativity of women; to broaden the bound- Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of aries of feminism to include building coalitions and support among Feminism, edited by Jessica Yee. other marginalized people; to foster peace and ecological aware- ness; and to expand the influence of feminist principles in the FILM REVIEW ...... 47 world. HERIZONS aims to reflect a feminist philosophy that is Blank City by Celine Danhier diverse, understandable and relevant to women’s daily lives. Review by Maureen Medved 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 HERIZONS acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canadian PENNI MITCHELL ...... 5 Periodical Fund (CPF) of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Incubating Change

SUSAN G. COLE ...... 13 With the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council. Dishonourable Killings Publications Mail Agreement No. 40008866, Return Undeliverable JOANNA CHIU ...... 31 Addresses to: PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3C 2G1, The Occupation of Women Email: [email protected] Herizons is proudly printed with union labour at LYN COCKBURN ...... 48 The Winnipeg Sun Commercial Print Division on Ethical Brew Erupts Forest Stewardship Council®-certified paper.

2 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS letters

ABOLITIONIST OBJECTION We thought that Women’s Worlds was a place where Well, the choice by Herizons to put Joanna’s Chiu column we could talk freely. A group decided that we didn’t have [“Women’s Worlds Collide,” Fall 2011] at the front of the that right. Are we going to talk about that? Respectful dia- magazine tells it all. I always suspected that the editorial logue also means letting women decide for themselves line of Herizons was pro-sex trade; now I’m sure. what they want to hear and letting them express their I’m one of the co-coordinators of Global Fleshmapping/ views. Painting the feminist abolitionist position [regarding Les draps parlent/La Resistencia de las mujeres, an aboli- the sex trade] as being harmful to women, violent or con- tionist art and politics project that we organized within servative does just the contrary, but no one seems to care. Women’s Worlds [international conference] that took If Herizons wants to play arbiter for the sex industry, it place in July. I’m amazed that no one, even from the or- would be nice to say it clearly like Joanna Chiu did in her ganizing body of Women’s Worlds, took the trouble to ask column…. Clearly at stake are two visions of women’s us how we felt when a group of women organized a sit-in equality. Can we talk about that? and made noise outside our venue during the last day of The Concertation des luttes contre l’exploitation our event at the July conference in Ottawa. I personally sexuelle (CLES), which is, with Vancouver Rape Relief and felt unwelcomed during and, mostly, after the congress. Women’s Shelter, the group that put the event together, Where does that take us? How I feel doesn’t seem to be has a very lively and growing young feminists’ abolitionists taken seriously. Why? group. They are facing the same bashing and are told that We had 16 diverse women seated around our discussion they do not represent their generation or have been brain- table for 90 minutes each day. We had women from washed by second wave feminists! Bangladesh, Italy, Mexico, Haiti, South Korea, Nigeria, If Herizons’ readers want to know more about Global Morocco, Denmark, Sweden, Canada and Japan repre- Flesh mapping/Les draps parlent/Resistencia de las mu- senting organizations that are actively working against jeres, they can visit the Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter commercial sexual exploitation. There were women who website http://bit.ly/oLxaZP or the CLES site at http://bit.ly/ have been in the sex trade, native women, racialized uX8pOo. women, and violence-against-women activists, academics DIANE MATTE and students. And all of them agreed that prostitution is part Montreal, QC. of the patriarchal set-up to keep women at men’s service and that it is an industry that feeds on women’s economic EDITOR’S NOTE: Herizons publishes articles that reflect a dependence and exploitation. These women’s credibility is spectrum of views on sex work and prostitution and does denied on a regular basis, and they are often simply told to not have an editorial line on prostitution. Columnists are shut up. They are treated as being brainwashed, outdated freely encouraged to express their views within the par- feminists, moralists or prohibitionists, etc. ameters of Herizons’ purpose as stated on page 2.

CORRECTION Quebec’s occupational health and safety laws. In In the Fall 2011 issue of Herizons, we published the fact, it was amended legislation in the provinces of article “Is Your Boss a Bully? ” by Barbara Janusz. Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario to which the Near the end of the article, the following statement author originally referred. appears and, due to an error on our part, gives an In the name of accuracy, therefore, the paragraph incorrect impression. It reads: should start: “Within Canada, only Quebec has a separate “Within Canada, only Quebec has a separate tribunal authorized to provide redress to bullied em- tribunal authorized to provide redress to bullied ployees. Under its occupational health and safety employees. Under amended provincial occupational laws, employers who fail to diffuse a hostile work health and safety laws in Saskatchewan, Manitoba environment are investigated and may be fined. ” and Ontario, employers who fail to diffuse a Barbarba Janusz pointed out that due to the hostile work environment are investigated and appearance of the word “its” in this context, read- may be fined.” ers are led to conclude that she was referring to We apologize for this error.

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 3 Is your wish list for a better world too daunting? With the support of thousands of Canadians, Inter Pares is already doing all these things and much, much more. For over thirty years, we have built alliances with citizen movements around the world to work for peace and social justice. Help us bring about the change you seek. Donate now at www.interpares.ca/change

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4 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS First Word BY PENNI MITCHELL

INCUBATING CHANGE

If you’ve ever been part of a protest movement and won, you the protests at Toronto’s G20 Summit last summer. It’s what know the feeling. It’s a sense of power that’s created when a led to the Seattle World Trade Organization protest more than group of people joins together and nothing can stop you. It’s a decade ago. And it’s the philosophy that informed Naomi a political high. You’re fearless and there’s a certainty that your Klein’s No Logo, a corporate critique that was presciently called will is about to move the world forward. a “movement bible” by the New York Times. Klein’s Shock Within a few short weeks of the Occupy Wall Street protest, Doctrine is an even harder-hitting modern examination of the feeling of change was already palpable. The leaderless oc- global capitalism. In it, she exposed corporate elites who ex- cupiers who dug in at corporate America’s headquarters brought ploited natural disasters and propped up their political cronies with them a new idea and that idea flourished and grew inside who, in return, ensured economic reforms that perpetuated the Occupy movement’s tented incubators. After just two even greater private wealth at the expense of the public good. months, that growing idea had already successfully pushed the At first, Klein’s doctrine sounded like a nefarious plot—the boundaries of human rights a notch further. economic philosophy of Milton Friedman couldn’t be that bad, Almost overnight, it seemed like the idea that global capital- could it? Gradually, however, after Hurricane Katrina, after ism must be held accountable to people began to occupy a the sub-prime lending fiasco in the U.S. and the subsequent larger and larger territory. Even those of us who weren’t there, bailout of the very corporations that profited massively from and perhaps those of us who didn’t get it at first, started to find unregulated banking practices and that partly inspired the ourselves in agreement with Occupy’s demand that capitalism economic crisis, a shift in our awareness occurred. must be made work for people, not the other way around. Maybe it was because the perfect economic storm was brew- I was thinking about movements like Occupy when I picked ing for a long time. But it didn’t even seem surprising that we up Irshad Manji’s new book, Allah, Liberty & Love. Written saw Mark Carney, head of the Bank of Canada, wholeheartedly well before the Occupy Wall Street movement began, it is agree that the Occupy Wall Street movement had legitimate primarily a book about the democratization of a religion, but complaints about the unaccountability of capitalism. Manji’s observations apply to social movements, too. Manji When people as divergent as Carney and Klein start tells the story of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a 20th-century Muslim preaching that the crisis of modern capitalism affects not reformer who inspired Mahatma Ghandi. Ghaffar Khan in- only protesters or bankers, but all of us, we’re seeing a huge spired his people to protest against British imperialism and he shift. Suddenly, it’s no longer fringe politics but responsible embraced non-violence as a political strategy. Manji is saying economics to demand greater accountability from capitalism, that humanity’s path to liberation, whether the events were especially at a time when so many U.S. corporations record- 100 years ago or last month, is illuminated by the moral cour- ing record profits refuse to aid the economic recovery by age of those who come before. reducing unemployment. The idea that the philosophical DNA of reform movements It takes a village to create change and it doesn’t matter whether exists well before future protesters carry it into the streets makes the village is made of mud bricks or polyethylene. The movement total sense. In fact, I can see how the 1968 feminist occupation for global economic structural change will continue as long as of Ladies Home Journal office was pre-figured by the lunch- the momentum for change continues. A revolution can’t be counter occupations by African Americans protesting stopped with an ordinance, arrests or pepper spray. segregation in 1960. “The world is evolving,” explained an occupier in Calgary More recently, the political seeds of the Occupy Wall Street who was asked if removing the tents would harm the cause. movement were sown before the first tents went up in New “We know now that money is not as important as human be- York’s Zuccotti Park. The idea that citizens have a right to ings,” he continued. “And we can’t unknow that. Removing expect accountability from corporations is, after all, what drove the tents will not change that.” 

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 5 nelliegrams FOUR FEMALE SEEING RED OVER PINK PREMIERS BY AMANDA LE ROUGETEL After winning the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race in September 2011, Alison Redford became the province’s fi rst female premier and vowed to restore millions of dollars that had been cut from edu- cation, and to hold a public inquiry into allegations of queue-jumping in the province’s health-care system. She also became the fourth woman now leading a provincial/territorial government in Canada. Redford, a 46-year-old former justice minister, joined B.C.’s Christy Clark, Nunavut’s Eva Aariak and Newfoundland and Labrador Progressive Conservative Kathy Dunderdale. Dunderdale be- came only the second woman ever to become a provincial premier following a general election in October. The fi rst woman elected premier in Canada was P.E.I. Liberal leader Catherine Callbeck in 1993. Callbeck is now a senator. Clark won the leadership race to become B.C. Liberal party leader in March 2011 and automatically became the province’s premier. She is not expected to call an election until 2013. Aariak became premier of Nunavut Women have raised millions of dollars for the disease yet the environmental causes of breast cancer are not closely examined. Photo: Courtesy Pink Ribbons Inc. under the territory’s consensus gov- ernment system in November 2008. A compelling exposé of the pink ribbon Revlon and Avon (and the vast majority of CANADA POST TO industry, the newly released documentary personal care product manufacturers) use DELIVER PAY EQUITY Pink Ribbons, Inc. delineates with clarity ingredients associated with cancer in their It took 28 years, but the Supreme where the battle against breast cancer products (spend some time on Court of Canada has ruled in favour really needs to be fought—on the doorsteps safecosmetics.org to learn more) all the of female Canada Post workers in of corporate America. while participating heavily in the pink a pay equity case involving an esti- Banks, car manufacturers, golf product ribbon industry for “the cure.” mated 6,000 women. manufactuers, food companies that use Despite the billions of dollars raised As a result of the November ruling, genetically modified growth hormones in through runs for “the cure,” only a millions of dollars in retroactive pay- their products—the list is endless. miniscule amount is invested in research on ments for the mostly retired workers Corporations by the hundreds have pinked the causes of breast cancer. After three must be paid by the crown corpora- their products (or developed a line of pink decades, the vast majority of money raised tion, which is subject to Ottawa’s pay fundraising items) to align themselves with is spent on methods of detecting cancer equity legislation but refused to pay the the most successful cause marketing and on drug and radiation treatments. workers a generation ago. In 1983, the campaign in history. But all this pink The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation case was first launched by the Public merchandising obfuscates some serious estimates that each week 445 women in Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). issues, as the book, Pink Ribbons Inc., Canada are diagnosed and 100 women die The PSAC complaint was originally penned by Samantha King, revealed in 2006 from breast cancer. Today’s treatments— decided in 2005 by the Canadian “Pink washing” is a convenient and what breast cancer expert Dr. Susan Love Human Rights Tribunal, which profitable way for corporate entities to be calls “slash, burn and poison”—are awarded $150 million in damages plus seen as doing good—by associating their essentially the same as those used 40 years interest. However, in 2008, a federal brands with a popular, emotional issue. Pink ago. Clearly, coming up with modified court overturned the decision and Ribbons Inc. points out that this also treatments is helpful, but why isn’t more that ruling was later upheld by the distracts consumers from the facts of done to rid our environment of toxins in the Federal Court of Appeal. breast cancer, including the role that first place? Patty Ducharme, National Executive industry plays in perpetuating the disease. Barbara Ehrenreich, a feminist social Vice-President of PSAC was pleased For example, cosmetic companies like critic and writer, says in the National Film

6 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS Board production directed by veteran companies that profit by or contribute to the nelliegrams filmmaker Léa Pool, “We used to march in cancer epidemic. Brenner says people the street [in anger]. Now we run for a cure should be more “pissed off.” Featured in Pink at the outcome, but criticized the fact [with optimism].” This is not progress, as Ribbons Inc. is the Plastics Focus group, that PSAC had to fight for nearly three Ehrenreich points out. Feminists know the which is united by the fact that its members decades. “Canada needs a proac- value of anger. The film’s message is that are women who worked in the automotive tive pay equity law that ensures that pink campaigns placate women with plastics industry; many have been diagnosed women won’t have to wait decades to cheerfulness instead of encouraging a with cancer or had miscarriages. be compensated for the value of their political critique of the cancer industry. Breast Cancer Action educates women to work,” she said. Without narration or voiceover, Pink “think before we pink.” Don’t automatically Ribbons, Inc. allows the cause marketers, support corporate-driven pink campaigns. PORTAL FOR POLITICOS corporate spokespeople, run/walk for the Rather, do the research to understand who’s Equal Voice and Carleton University’s cure participants, survivors (a problematic getting the money raised and what they’ll do Centre for Women, Politics and Public term for Ehrenreich, who has had cancer) with it. And know that no more than 15 Leadership have joined forces to make and activists to tell, unmediated, this story percent of money raised for cancer goes to research about women and politics of the breast cancer movement. any form of prevention research, and only more accessible. Among the voices are members of the IV five percent supports research considering Equal Voice and Carleton will work League, who learn to live as women dying environmental factors. with academics in Canada to develop from stage IV (metastasized) breast “It’s an epidemic, it’s horrible and it’s got a user-friendly web portal to key cancer—no number of pink ribbons can to stop,” says Ehrenreich. Watch Pink resources for women in politics. The bring them hope or optimism in the face of Ribbons, Inc. It will educate and inspire you project was made possible by a grant their diagnosis. Also in the documentary is to think before you pink. from the Bluma Appel Community Barbara Brenner, former executive director Find out when Pink Ribbons Inc. will be Trust in Toronto. of Breast Cancer Action, an advocacy group coming to your community in 2012 by “It is our hope that a newly minted which refuses to take money from checking out the NFB online www.nfb.ca.  female candidate or someone who is seriously thinking about running will be able to use this site as a valuable resource as they prepare for a nomi- nation or campaign as a confi rmed candidate,” says Nancy Peckford, PERSONS HONOURED executive director of Equal Voice. The portal will feature several Act to prohibit discrimination against women themes: women’s experiences as and their descendants. candidates; recruitment, nominations, Another feminist force honoured was Kim fundraising, leadership and elections; Pate, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry the impact of women’s participa- Society, and an internationally recognized tion in public life; gender and voting advocate for marginalized, victimized and behaviour; and strategies to promote criminalized women. Also on stage was increased women’s participation. Madeleine Boscoe, former executive direc- In the current House of Commons, tor of Winnipeg’s Canadian Women’s Health 25 per cent of MPs are women. In Network, who has dedicated more than 30 the NDP caucus, 39 percent of MPs years to women’s health issues, including are women. Eighteen percent of reproductive choice as well as campaigns elected Liberals and 17 percent of to remove faulty devices and drugs from Conservatives are women. One in four the market. Bloc MPs is a woman, and Elizabeth Nancy Hartling of New Brunswick, an May is the sole Green Party MP. advocate for abused women, was also hon- oured. Lucie Joyal, of Quebec, a leader in WOMEN SHARE her province’s efforts to eliminate violence PEACE PRIZE against women and children, received an For standing up to her award, along with Amber JoAnn Fletcher, Ellen Johnson country’s warlords, a Saskatchewan advocate for equality and Sirleaf Liberian activist Lima social justice. Gbowee was awarded the Nobel In 1929, five Alberta women (Louise Peace Prize in October, along with Recipients of the 2011 Governor General’s McKinney, Henrietta Muir, Nellie McClung, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Irene Parlby and Emily Murphy) won the Sirleaf and Yemeni peace activist Case include Sharon McIvor, of British judiciary battle to be recognized as persons, Tawakkul Karman. Columbia, who has devoted close to three therefore making them eligible for appoint- Gbowee, a trauma counsellor decades of her life to advancing equality for ment to the Senate. The Governor General’s who aided women raped by Liberian Aboriginal women. McIvor is the face behind Awards in Commemoration of the Persons soldiers, went on to mobilize women the legal fight to force changes to the Indian Case were established in 1979.  known as the “women in white” in an

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 7 nelliegrams CAMPAIGN UPDATES anti-war campaign. Women picketed, fasted and protested by the hundreds, ETHICAL OIL calling upon him to reject the proposal. demanding government leaders and FUELS CRITICISM The U.S. State Department, charged with warlords end the violence. Gbowee’s Proponents of the contro- determining whether the application is in efforts aided the toppling of Liberia’s versial Keystone XL pipeline, that country’s national interest, is expected authoritarian leader Charles Taylor. which would transport oil from to release its decision on the pipeline by the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Jodi Williams the Alberta oilsands region to end of the year. Sirleaf, fi rst elected in 2005, ushered the Gulf of Mexico, claim that —Penni Mitchell in a set of economic reforms and be- Canada’s strong treatment of women compa- came the fi rst elected female leader of red to that of Saudi Arabia is grounds to label APPOINTMENTS BENCHED an African country. Sirleaf, jailed under oilsands exports “ethical oil.” The appointment of female judges has Taylor’s regime for opposing his rule, Their strategy hasn’t worked. More than slowed under the government of Stephen was re-elected in November. Liberia’s 100 protesters were arrested in Ottawa in Harper. Only eight women were appointed economy is making slow progress and September for protesting against the pipe- to the federal judiciary in 2011, compared the Nobel Peace laureate has vowed line, many of them women. In November, to 41 men. Figures for 2010 indicate that 13 to create an inclusive government and thousands of protesters descended on the women and 37 men were appointed. In the introduce democratic reforms. White House to press U.S. President Barack last two years, 79 percent of federally ap- The third Peace Prize co-recipient, Obama to stop the proposed 2,673-kilometre pointed judges were men. Tawakkul Karman, 32, imprisoned for pipeline because they believe the oil isn’t “Those are shocking figures,” said being an active campaigner against ethical. Many women, including Canadian Elizabeth Sheehy, a University of Ottawa law Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh, actor Margot Kidder, were among those ar- professor, in the Globe and Mail. “The govern- is credited with mobilizing tens of rested. Aboriginal people are also among the ment owes an explanation to Canadians and thousands human rights supporters in project’s critics. especially to women in the legal profession.” her country to demand reforms. The Bitumen extracted from the oilsands re- Because of an active decision by previous chairperson of Women Journalists gion, according to environmental experts, is governments to recruit women to the bench, Without Chains is also a member of wreaking havoc on Alberta’s water and wil- one third of the 1,117 federally appointed the Islah Party, the country’s largest dlife while causing Canada’s greenhouse gas judges are now women. In 2005, Liberal jus- opposition party, and one of few fe- emissions to escalate. Former U.S. vice-pre- tice minister Irwin Cotler appointed female male public leaders in Yemen. sident Al Gore called oilsands oil “the dirtiest candidates approximately 40 per cent of oil on the planet.” Producing and refining the time. The federal government appoints MEN AGAINST MACHISMO oilsands bitumen is energy-intensive and judges to superior and appellate courts, the A growing number of men in Argentina releases 82 percent more greenhouse gas Federal Court of Canada, the Tax Court and are to helping to eradicate violence emissions according to the best estimates. It the Supreme Court of Canada. Provinces ap- against women by joining a campaign also releases more poisonous mercury and point judges to provincial court benches. called 260 Men Against Machismo. arsenic compared to conventional oil. The Harper government recently ap- Named after the number of women U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham pointed two Supreme Court Justices: killed by male intimate partners in has said, “Dirty oil is buying oil from some- Justice Andromarche Karakatsanis was a Argentina in 2010, the movement has one who takes the money and sponsors deputy attorney general of Ontario under recruited well-known men in politics, terrorism and tries to make the world a dark Progressive Conservative premier Mike the arts, the labour movement and the and sinister place to live.” Venezuela and Harris, while Justice Michael Moldaver, armed forces. Iran are examples of “dirty” oil producers, formerly of the Ontario Court of Appeal, has In 2011, more than two dozen he says. The U.S. does not, however, intend a reputation as a critic of the proliferation of events were organized by cabinet to cut its oil imports from Saudi Arabia, a cases brought forth based on the principles ministers, trade union leaders and country whose equality index is considered of the Charter of Rights. military and police offi cers who ad- bottom of the barrel by many observers. dressed their colleagues about the According to Nobel Peace Prize laurate AUSTRALIA CRACKS GLASS CEILING need to question machismo and what Jodi Williams, “It is deeply disturbing that the Australia’s post office, broadcasting agency it means to the lives of women. oil industry is exploiting the issue of women’s and other crown corporations and boards Men are being asked to sign a rights in order to shift the discussion away will be required to appoint women to fill 40 commitment to make a day-to-day from fossil fuel and climate change. Neither percent of board positions. Federal Finance evaluation of their sexist attitudes, to their tactics nor their tar sands are ethical.” Minister Penny Wong announced that the commit to changing such attitudes, Says Williams, “There is no such thing quotas will apply to all government business and also to promise not to be violent as ethical fossil fuel, regardless of geogra- enterprises. towards women. phical origin. The ethical choice is to move “A key element of these reforms is requir- “It was very interesting to see the as quickly as possible away from fossil ing board chairs and responsible ministers to defence minister [Arturo Puricelli] call fuels—period.” focus on gender diversity when appointing together the joint chiefs of staff and, Female Nobel Peace Prize laureates board members,” Wong told a Global Banking in a room packed with military per- Betty Williams, Mairead Maguire, Rigoberta Alliance for Women forum in Sydney. sonnel, talk to them about machismo Menchú Tum and Shirin Ebadi, were among Wong, Australia’s second ever female and get them to commit themselves to those who wrote an open letter to Obama, finance minister, predicts the move will

8 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS nelliegrams

fi ghting it,” said José María Di Bello, see more women advance in the country’s pressure, bullying and harassment. Twenty- one of the leaders of the campaign. boardrooms. “It is my view that the govern- seven percent of youth who had LGBTQ —IPS News ment should lead, rather than follow on parents reported being physically harassed gender equality.” about the sexual orientation of their parents. STRIPPED- Australia’s Labor party promised during They were also more likely than their peers DOWN VATICAN the 2010 election to have 40 percent female to be physical harassed or assaulted in con- A protester from representation on public boards by 2015. nection with their own gender expression. the Ukrainian women’s rights group Private-sector companies will not be sub- Interestingly, students in schools with Femen was detained in the Vatican ject to the quota law. specific anti-homophobia policies reported in November after holding a topless —Associated Press a lower incidence of physical harassment. protest against what she called the While 67 percent of LGBTQ students from Roman Catholic Church’s “misogynist HOMOPHOBIA schools with no anti-homophobia policies policies” under the balcony of Pope RULES SCHOOLS said they had never been physically harassed, Benedict XVI. Homophobic and transpho- 80 percent of LGBTQ students from schools Oleksandra Shevchenko slipped into bic comments are heard on with anti-homophobia measures said they had St. Peter’s Square to display a placard a daily basis by nearly half never experienced physical harassment. that read, “Freedom For Women.” She of high school students. This Sexual and gender minority students who then chanted, “Freedom! Freedom! We is among the findings of reported that their schools had anti-ho- Are Free!” in Italian and removed her the first Canadian study on homophobia and mophobia policies were significantly more shirt before being detained by police. transphobia in schools, in which over 3,700 likely to feel that their school community Shevchenko’s protest took place fol- students participated, of which roughly 1,200 was supportive of LGBTQ individuals (58.4 lowing the pontiff’s Sunday address in self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, versus 25.3 percent) and to report homopho- the square. A statement by the group two Spirit, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ). bic incidents to teachers or other staff (58.1 said the speech was papal patriarchal Forty-eight percent of students who re- versus 33.6 percent. propaganda, which “imposes medieval sponded to the survey that forms the basis The report’s authors call on provincial ideas about women on the world.” of the report Every Class in Every School ministries of education to make the inclusion Femen members recently protested said that they heard terms like “faggot” of anti-homophobia (bi-phobia and transpho- in front of the home of former IMF and “dyke” used daily in a derogatory way. bia) policies mandatory in all schools. They Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn According to the report, verbal harassment call on school divisions to develop policies in Paris, and in Rome they painted was more widely reported among female to make schools safer, more respectful and their topless bodies in the colours of sexual minority students (55 percent) than more welcoming for all students. the Italian fl ag while calling for the male sexual minority respondents (42 per- —Penni Mitchell resignation of Italy’s Premier Silvio cent). Sexual minority students are defined Berlusconi, who resigned later in in the study as “youth who did not identify as SEX WORKER HELP AGENCY CLOSED November following the defection exclusively heterosexual.” An even higher PEERS, a Vancouver agency that helped of several of his ministers due to the rate (68 percent) of verbal harassment was women leave prostitution for 10 years, will country’s fi nancial woes. reported by students who identified as trans. close its doors this spring because of the —Radio Free Liberty The report, commissioned by Egale Canada B.C. government’s decision to combine all of Human Rights Trust with support from the its employment programs under a consor- MAID SUES Social Sciences and Humanities Research tium that is not community based. DOMINIQUE Council, was led by University of Winnipeg The province wants to set up one-stop STRAUSS-KAHN professor Catherine Taylor and Tracey Peter, centres to move people from training into Nafi ssatou Diallo, the hotel worker a professor at the University of Manitoba. jobs quickly. The centres are expected to who charged that Dominique Strauss- Disturbingly, 74 percent of trans students, replace training provided by community Kahn raped her in May 2011, has fi led 55 percent of sexual minority students and groups across the province. a lawsuit in the State Supreme Court even 26 percent of non-LGBT students re- PEERS Vancouver had the option to join a in The Bronx, N.Y. seeking damages ported being verbally harassed about what consortium to bid for a government contract, from her alleged assailant. the researchers call “gender expression.” executive director Ty Mistry said. But staff Police dropped criminal charges Twenty-one percent of LGBTQ students decided a mainstream system would not against Strauss-Kahn, who, at the time who responded to the survey experienced help clients who have special needs. of his arrest was the managing direc- either physical harassment or assault on Mistry condemned the move as “the Wal- tor of the International Monetary Fund the basis of their sexual orientation. Even Martization of employment service” in the and a leading candidate for the French “perceived sexual orientation” can pose a province, referring to the observation that presidency. This followed a prelimi- danger. The study reports that 10 percent when a giant Wal-Mart moves into a com- nary trial that saw the credibility Diallo, of the students who reported experienc- munity specialized stores disappear. a Guinean immigrant, undermined by ing physical harassment based on “sexual Sex workers do not simply need a “new aggressive defence lawyers. orientation or perceived sexual orientation” job,” Mistry said. Rather, they “have to Diallo is seeking unspecifi ed dam- did not identify as being LGBTQ.” unlearn everything they learned and then ages for what her suit describes as a No one, it seems, is immune from relearn new ways of living.”  “violent and sadistic attack.” 

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 9 NNEWEW FROM DEMETER PRESS FALL 2011

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Mirci Full Win-12.indd 1 11-11-28 11:05 AM When I worked as part of the collective that published Feminary [subtitled A Feminist MINNIE BRUCE PRATT Journal for the South, Emphasizing Lesbian The Poet vs. the Profiteers Visions], printers often refused to print mate- rial produced by feminists and lesbians even BY JOY PARKS though we were paying them! Many of the poems you’ve written in the past have been about lives that happen outside the mainstream. The poems in Inside the Money Machine deal with these issues as well, but they feel broader, larger in scope. What’s different about living inside/ outside the mainstream in America today? MINNIE BRUCE PRATT: I think that the crisis in capitalism has called the question of who the “mainstream” is. The last 30 years—and more if we go back to the organizing of Black communities in the l950s U.S. South—have been about fighting to expand the public space, and public acknowledgement, for people who have been excluded in the U.S., not just from “citizenship,” but also from the very definition of humanity. My struggle as a lesbian mother—who lost custody of my children simply because of my love for other women—was part of that fight. The working people of the U.S. have gained crucial les- sons in solidarity with each other from the struggles of the last half century. Now the scaffolding of capitalism stands starkly clear to more people, as banks and corporations reap record profits and regular working people have their homes foreclosed and can’t get work. Money for health care Poet Minnie Bruce Pratt whose sixth book of poetry is a journey through and beyond capitalism, is seen here at a and education is siphoned off to fund mul- Syracuse University protest of Morgan Chase’s CEO as a commencement speaker. (Photo: Leslie Fineberg) tiple U.S. wars waged to make the world secure for corporate investment! Essayist, theorist and poet Minnie Bruce Do you still believe poetry is a viable politi- In this context, the mainstream is the 99 Pratt has written extensively on feminist, cal tool? percent of us who work for a living and have lesbian and transgender issues in North MINNIE BRUCE PRATT: I think poetry is only our ability to labour to support us and America for more than 20 years. Her sixth the verbal art form best suited to this age. our families.The “broadening” of the scope book of poetry, Inside the Money Machine, Written poetry condenses thought, sensuality in my poems reflects these broadening con- is a journey through and beyond capitalism and physicality, images, sound and energy nections. I am a poet writing from inside this in the 21st century. into a compact, quickly accessed communi- mainstream—the stream of working people HERIZONS: Many of the poems in Inside cation that can have tremendous intellectual who create the wealth of the world, and the Money Machine deal with issues and and emotional impacts. We poets can post who can create a future in which we live. situations that could have been taken from our poems in cyberspace, bypassing the What happens now? Where do we go yesterday’s newspaper. Did you consciously gatekeepers of literature and going directly from here? set out to write about the effects of the eco- to people leading their everyday lives. nomic situation? MINNIE BRUCE PRATT: People are already What’s different about being a working poet answering your question as they occupy MINNIE BRUCE PRATT: That reflects the in 2011, as compared to 1981, when The cycle of boom and bust that has recurred hundreds of cities. All over, these occupations Sound of One Fork was released? under capitalism. I was very conscious of of resistance are becoming rallying points this as I wrote the poems. I started work- MINNIE BRUCE PRATT: In 1981, I would for those who now feel they have nothing to ing on them seriously in the late ’90s after send my lesbian poems off to mainstream lose. I was writing this world in the poems I started to study economics and read the literary journals and get back curt little of Inside the Money Machine. Now I see the Communist Manifesto. I discovered how rejection notes: “These are not for us!” poems leaping off the pages into the cities of beautiful was the language of [Karl] Marx As lesbians we had to create not only our this country. and [Frederick] Engels. If the economists literature, but the magazines, newspapers Herizons’ review of Inside the Money can write poetry, what would happen if the and publishing houses to publish our work, Machine is on page 45. The book is available poet tried to write their economics? the distribution systems, the bookstores. at www.carolinawrenpress.org. 

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12 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS Cole’s Notes BY SUSAN G. COLE

NO HONOUR IN KILLINGS

I’ve been following the first-degree murder trial involving film festival in 2010. Saywell was moved to make her movie Montreal’s Shafia family almost obsessively. The case in- after the murder of Toronto teen Aqsa Parvez by her father. volves the deaths of three teenage girls born in Afghanistan: The filmmaker investigated the circumstances leading up to Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti,13, along with Rona her death and tracked several other stories of young Muslim Air Mohammed, who had been married to their father, girls who were harassed, abused and sometimes killed because Mohammed Shafia. The drowned bodies were recovered they threw off their hijabs or resisted the strictures of funda- from a family car in the Rideau Canal in 2009. On trial are mentalist Islam in other ways. Mohammed Shafia, as well as the girls’ mother Tooba and Viewers cheered the film, and the documentary took the their brother Hamed, 20. Audience Choice award. That made its Islamophobia even Evidence was presented that Mohammed Shafia believed more distressing. What was Saywell trying to say, I wondered, his daughters had betrayed Islam and committed treason. by focusing on immigrant Muslim families? After seeing the Zainab, engaged to a young man of Pakistani descent, was movie, you would have thought that Islam was dangerous to referred to by her father as a whore. The two youngest girls women’s safety, even though the teenaged boys interviewed appeared too interested in their adopted culture, with its pop for the film at a special high school session stated explicitly music, malls and all the rest. that they thought the issue was not Islam but male power. In almost every news article published during the legal What these killings represent is patriarchal control cloaked proceedings, the deaths have been referred to as “honour in the trappings of religion, especially in the case of the hijab, killings,” a term I’m beginning to loathe. which is also mentioned not a single time in the Qur’an. For one thing, it gives permission to the perpetrators to sug- And if religion is an issue in the oppression of women, it is gest that there exist specific values that might excuse murder. invariably of the fundamentalist kind. I’m constantly correcting “Honour” betokens a higher power at work and suggests that people who make broad, stereotypical statements about Islam. shame, not power, is the issue. “Do you mean fundamentalist Islam?” I might say. I might expect someone charged with murder to try to get “Yes,” is a common response, but the person is often per- away with using such a term, but I’m tired of journalists do- plexed, as if the phrase were redundant. ing so. By using the term honour killing, they make it seem “He’s turned Christian,” is something somebody recently that when male family members decide to kill a female family said to me. member, it differs from any other lethal form of violence against “Do you mean fundamentalist?” I responded. women. The term honour killings also sets such perpetrators “Yes.” apart from others who attack women and girls, and it demon- Then say so. Spiritual affiliation does not a reactionary izes Islam in the process by suggesting that this form of killing make. There’s a powerful thread of progressive activism among has a religious component to it. Christians, from the peace-loving Quakers to the Catholic There is no mention of so-called honour killings in the radicals the Berrigan brothers. Qur’an. These tribal constructs, designed to keep women in As for the Shafia family, you don’t have to go far to hear their place, have no basis in the Islamic faith. Female family racist comments about all those people coming to this country members are not killed because they are Muslim, after all, but with their backward values. Though the abuse and control because men in their families want to wield ultimate power of women may be prevalent in households with conservative and control over them. religious values, it is not unique to them. I had the same difficulty with Shelley Saywell’s documentary So don’t be fooled by the term honour killing. Violence In the Name of the Family, which played at Toronto’s Hot Docs against women has no race, class or spiritual persuasion. 

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 13 CONFESSIONS of a RELUCTANT CRAFTER

BY DEBORAH OSTROVSKY

’m standing beside the cash at a popular Montreal knitting booties out of organic, fair-trade cotton—any kind of material shop, and giant beads of sweat are rolling down my face. that isn’t, say, doused in toxic flame retardants. Young art I No one else here looks like they’re about to combust students with brightly dyed brush cuts sit discussing retro-style spontaneously in the feverish heat. Is it just me? Perhaps it’s knitting patterns for the video game Space Invaders. Their the pregnancy hormones that, for the last few months, have needles dip up and down with each garter stitch and purl. kept me in a constant hyperthermic state. Or it could be that, Everyone feels at home here, this intergenerational patch- for the first time since kindergarten, I have actually set foot work of women exchanging creative ideas. So why do I feel inside a knitting shop. like I have just been parachuted into a strange, foreign land? I have come to inquire about knitting lessons, and I’m so “How many lessons would you like?” the store owner asks, nervous that my hands start to shake as more sweat trickles smiling. “Five or ten? Or pay as you go. It’s relaxed here. And down my temples. you’re welcome to stay after your lesson as long as you want.” Let’s just say I’m far from my comfort zone in here. Stores “Five, please—that’ll be enough,” I respond curtly. like these—knitting, embroidery and fabric shops, where (mostly) But I keep telling myself I won’t even complete five. women are drawn together to cast on, stitch and felt—give me I come from a family of knitting women. But I was born the impression that I’ve crossed the border into unfamiliar ter- without the crafting gene and can’t cast on to save my life. ritory without a map. I watch other female customers, ranging I’ve rejected all manner of crafts—sewing, knitting, quilt- in age from their early 20s to their 70s, as they scan the shelves ing—since early childhood. I watched my sister work for of brightly coloured yarns and fabrics. Some chat with staff. months on Fair Isle sweaters for every new boyfriend and my Others roll nubbly, hand-dyed strands of wool between their mother develop tendonitis in both wrists. Still, I’ve decided fingers with a concentration and expertise reminiscent of some to give knitting a chance. mystic, ancient ritual. Other women sit in the cozy lounge area But mostly I am here to answer a question that has continued with its sprawling plush couches below a large poster advertising to nag at me over the past few years as I’ve watched just about a call for feminists, community intervention, rebel fibre, artists every woman I know take up some form of do-it-yourself and anarchists for a yarn-bombing event. “The Montreal streets (DIY) knitting or crafting activity. belong to the citizens, let’s take them back!” it says. Why are so many women—and it is mostly women—craft- The women in the lounge are an eclectic bunch. Retirees ing these days? knitting bonnets for premature babies at L’hôpital Saint-Justine. Like other parts of Canada, the knitting trend in particular Some, like me, are pregnant and on maternity leave. There has hit Quebec by storm. The yarn shop on the corner of my

are progressive parenting types learning how to make pint-sized street has gone from being perpetually empty to constantly Photo: Myroslava Pavlyk/ Bigstock

14 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS Crafting has taken Montreal by storm, so what is a feminist to do?

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 15 full. The waiting list for lessons is so long that the owner have children. Just 33 percent are employed full-time and 68 wouldn’t take down my name, which is how I ended up here, percent identify themselves as “part-time artist/artisan/craft- at another store uptown. Meanwhile, many women I know ers.” The average household income is $62,000. It seems that have started to sell their own knitting and sewing creations a huge number of these mature, educated women are not on Etsy.com. I’m beginning to feel like my lack of DIY craft- gainfully employed and rely on a partner’s salary. In other ing skills is denying me a creative outlet that other women, words, some may earn a living from crafting, but trying to and fellow feminists, are raving about. earn a living from it might also perpetuate economic dispari- I’m not even in some self-selecting, artsy group of crafters ties between men and women. With the Canadian Labour (remember, I can’t cast on, let alone manage a garter stitch. Nor Congress warning that the gender wage gap has been stuck do I know how to operate a sewing machine). And yet I, a at the same level since the mid-1990s, describing crafting as dweller outside the kingdom of the crafters, meet an increasing a “female-led revolution” might be overstating it. number of neophyte embroiderers, patchwork quilters and knit- Etsy.com’s regular feature, “Quit Your Day Job,” profiling ters in the various circles of women whose paths I cross. sellers who make a full-time living, may, in fact, be selling an Just what accounts for this growing trend? And is this trend unrealistic dream to the very artisans who make the site lucra- among women a good thing or a bad thing? tive for its owners. The site isn’t responsible for the sketchy “It’s just knitting,” a male friend says, trying to calm me financial security faced by an increasing number of highly edu- down. “It’s like fishing or skiing, like any other hobby.” cated North American women. But it certainly mirrors the But is it—really? fact that for many women, income has become less secure. The Craft Yarn Council in the U.S. estimates that there I’m aware that not all crafting women do it for the money. are around 38 million knitters and crocheters in that country, There are other arguments in favour of celebrating this revival. many of whom are between the ages of 25 and 34. “Knitting Kirsty Robertson, a professor of museum studies and contem- and Crocheting Are Hot!” the council declares on its site. porary art at the University of Western Ontario and a “Julia Roberts does it, so does Vanna White, Cameron Diaz, collaborator with the Viral Knitting Project, sees crafting as a Sarah Jessica Parker, Daryl Hannah, Hilary Swank.” Rowan, reaction to an economy that has decimated the North American a popular U.K. yarn manufacturer estimates that 11 per cent textile industry. In Rebellious Doilies and Subversive Stitches, of the British population regularly knits. While no precise Robertson describes it as a political act. “There is something figures exist for Canada, it’s safe to say that an increasing relevant,” she writes, “in the fact that workers from textile plants number of women are taking up the needles. in North Carolina found themselves marching alongside activist Elizabeth Anderson of the San Antonio, Texas, marketing knitters, environmentalists and anarchists at protests against and communications firm Guerra, DeBerry, Coody reports that the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999.” crafting now means big money. Figures compiled from online U.S. groups like the Austin Craft Mafia and books like sites like craftster.org suggest that in 2010 online crafts sales Faythe Levine’s Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, generated revenue of more than $29 billion in the U.S. alone. and Design also celebrate this revival, demonstrating how the This is not to mention the Etsy.com colossus, the hip online economic void has converged with environmentalism as well international site where (mostly) female crafters peddle their as with a community spirit geared up to defy the nefarious wares, with investors getting a cut of each transaction as well as effects of a free-market economy. Any movement providing gaining access to seller and buyer information. the impetus to question the fragmented, unethical chain of Etsy.com facilitates an estimated $10 to 13 million in sales labour from which their food and consumer goods come—as per month. And yet, this may not necessarily mean it is lucra- well as their scarves, mitts and toques—can’t be a bad thing. tive for producers. In 2009, blogger Sara Mosle wrote in her Inspired by her North Carolina knitting circle, women like post “Etsy.com Peddles a False Feminist Fantasy” that very Betsy Greer, who helped popularize the term “craftivism,” few of the female sellers (96 percent of all sellers are women, have turned knitting into a powerful artistic and political act. including those in Canada) have been able to make much It is epitomized by stunning works such as Marianne Jørgensen money, let alone create full-time employment from their crafts. and the Cast Off Knitters’ 2006 Pink M.24 Chaffee, an out- The proportion of male users of the site was four percent. of-commission army tank covered in 4,000 knitted pink squares Bust magazine praises the “female-led DIY revolution” on and assembled in public to protest Denmark’s involvement Etsy.com and sees it as a positive movement for women. It in the Iraq war. A growing number of artists, including Line opens up the international marketplace for felted purse sellers, Bruntse, have created works using handicrafts traditionally say, from Winnipeg, to potential clients in Paris. With an reserved for domestic objects. Bruntse’s public installations average age of 35, over 58 percent of female sellers have col- of woven murals, dresses and blankets knitted with strips of lege degrees, while 55 percent are married and 46 percent rubber inner tube highlight the ingenious skill typically

16 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS associated with the drudgery of women’s household labour. years, activists like scientist Sandra Steingraber have been It’s art and it’s definitely political. explaining the need for greater awareness about the environ- Then there are books by knitting guru Debbie Stoller, whose mental links to obstetrical complications, including miscarriage 2003 Stitch ’n Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook transformed popular and prematurity. But administrators, it turns out, don’t want perceptions of knitting, an activity once associated with Victorian- to advertise for support services in the hallowed corridors of era domestic oppression. Along with embroidery and sewing, their hospitals, let alone discuss the issue of environmental women’s handicrafts had been viewed by many early feminists risks for prematurity. as just another angel-in-the-house hobby that limited women’s Putting up posters for a support group for bereaved parents, intellectual lives and as one of the main cultural symbols of their we were told, would send the wrong message. Nobody wanted fettered attachment to the world of unpaid labour. to think that babies died or that fetuses were miscarried on Stoller, co-founder of Bust, formed the first stitch ’n bitch their premises. Instead, we were told by a couple of sympathetic group in 1999 and helped make knitting cool for a new genera- social workers that a few bereaved women they knew had tion. A promo piece that accompanies the release of Stoller’s enjoyed scrapbooking or some form of crafting during the 2010 Stich ’n Bitch Superstar Knitting Go Beyond the Basics quotes grieving process—something they could do at home. It seemed her saying, “Many young people were interested in opting out like the medical system was telling women to just shut up. of what they perceived to be a global corporate culture that The DIY crafting craze may seem worlds apart from the cared little about the people who made their products and even issue of Ehrenreich’s disdain for the cult of pink-ribbon kitsch less about the effect their products had on the environment.” and reproductive health. But I think it is healthy to be skepti- Stoller makes no claim that crafting cal. If this craft revival is celebrated is liberating, in other words. As she by third-wave feminist magazines like stated in a 2005 interview with the “Along with embroidery Bust and Canada’s Shameless because Guardian, “It’s just a fun thing. Our crafting has finally shed its history of grandmothers have always known and sewing, women’s female oppression, it’s worth looking this, and we’re just learning it again.” handicrafts had been at the greater social forces that might Some of our grandmothers did it viewed by many early be trying to spoil our party. They may because professions in biochemistry, be the same forces that trampled over medicine or engineering weren’t an feminists as just another Ehrenreich’s breast cancer sisterhood option. Still, I see her point. angel-in-the-house hobby.” and turned it into teddy bears and But I also had what I like to call candle making. my Barbara Ehrenreich moment, a The surge in the popularity of few years ago when I became increasingly suspicious of this knitting has also reached its zenith at a time when Canada growing crafting trend. Ehrenreich, an American author and has fewer women in Parliament than most of Europe, ranking activist, wrote a powerful Harper’s essay a decade ago, called 48th in the world (behind Rwanda, Iraq and Afghanistan, “Welcome to Cancerland,” in which she lamented the devolu- according to equalvoice.ca). With statistics like these, I’m not tion of women’s feminist health activism. How, she wondered, sure if we should be happy about having enough leisure time did marching in the streets for better health care turn into to reclaim the hobbies granny used to love. And if circum- selling pink teddy bears and runs for the cure? Once the realm stances for women in public life are forcing some of us—if of grassroots women’s groups demanding answers from the only subconsciously—to choose knitting and yarn-bombing medical establishment, breast cancer, Ehrenreich explained, over shouting into the megaphone, occupying city hall or became hijacked by pink ribbon kitsch, with patients and sitting in the boardroom, it’s a form of feminist activism that survivors themselves frequently making and selling tchotchkes, smacks of futility to me. pink candles, stuffed toys and beading pink necklaces in “Knitting, like so much of women’s work, can be deeply fundraising efforts. Sure, a portion of the proceeds goes to satisfying,” says Carol Sector, a fellow Montreal feminist research, but, as we now know, research money often ends up activist who took up knitting again a few years ago. But, like in the hands of the very corporations responsible for spewing me, she also feels a little torn about this hobby and the reasons carcinogens into our air, water and food supply. behind its recent rise in popularity. “The resurgence in crafting Where, Ehrenreich asked, has the real activism gone? is as much about Tea Party values,” Sector says, “as it is about A few years ago, I was part of a group of health advocates adding value to a woman’s life.” I think she may have a point. who visited Montreal hospitals to discuss the need for more And, after seeing Vodofone cellphone ads about yarn-bombing medical and social support for bereaved parents, particularly and hearing of Toyota-sponsored craft fairs, I fear this revival those who have experienced a perinatal or neonatal death. For might also go the way of the corporatized pink ribbon. As

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18 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS University of Hawaii at Manoa political science professor culture, it would be a mistake to discount the influence of Debora Halbert suggests in her work on women and intel- figures like Martha Stewart or Nigella Lawson. There is no lectual property, even the ownership of knowledge about ‘pure’ form of resistance politics,” she adds, “that will be un- knitting, including patterns and design, has become invaded touched by the forces it seeks to critique.” by copyright issues and increasingly privatized. Kirsty Robertson tells me something similar. I ask her whether “Still,” Secter adds, “there seem to be a good number of cool the resurgence of crafting has something to do not only with women who are learning to do these things and enjoying both activism, but also a renewed glorification of domesticity. “I the product and the company of the group they do it with.” definitely think they both work together,” she says. “I was But then there are other disquieting trends. Popular classic interested in activist knitting. There are certainly other com- books from the late 1980s, like The Subversive Stitch (1989) by munities, a more conservative family-values one being a case feminist Roszika Parker, have been replaced almost seamlessly in point. There are also plenty of people who have been knit- by Kate Jacob’s sappy, chick lit 2007 bestseller The Friday Night ting all their lives and would never self-define as a part of either Knitting Club (which includes recipes for muffins with a reading of these groups. Occasionally, these communities overlap.” guide and knitting pattern). And it may be less than a coincidence But, she reminds me, “They are often quite separate.” that crafting has hit an all-time high in popularity just as the It’s a few weeks after signing up for my first knitting lesson, cult of domesticity and infantilized depictions of women are and I’m absolutely hooked. Knitting has an almost mathematical back in style. Mommy blogs like Ree Drummond’s “desperate quality; it’s a technical skill involving just the right amount of housewife” site Pioneerwoman.com, TV reality shows like Keeping creativity and repetition to be meditative while practising my Up with the Kardashians, plastic surgery and celebrity baby bumps cable stitch or a simple intarsia. My obstetrician warns me that are colonizing the Internet, the airwaves and the newsstands. my pregnancy is high-risk and that I should find activities where In the 19th century, writer I can sit for long periods of time. Mary Lamb claimed that handi- Knitting is perfect, and I can still crafts like embroidery created “Any attempt to imbue waddle around enough to attend intellectual starvation among my lesson every week. Here in this women. The Brontë Sisters and handicrafts with any one cozy lounge, I’m meeting women Elizabeth Gaskell claimed that specific set of values, beliefs or from around the world and from such tasks perpetuated women’s group identity could send me all walks of life. My knitting in- subservience. Meanwhile, friends structor, who is from France, tells of mine with whom I used to at- running in circles.” me that her midwife knit beside tend street protests with are now —Debra Ostrovsky her as she went into labour, helping spending Friday nights eating her to relax. A knitting student homemade brownies at stitch ’n who works in a hospital explains bitch parties. If this is some form of activism, it’s the very soft that knitting is being used as therapy for patients who have and safe, feminine kind. suffered emotional trauma. Elizabeth Groeneveld, a McGill lecturer who recently I’m happy here. I’m also happy that one of the instructors completed her doctorate in literary studies at the University is male. Crafting culture has fanned out to include a diverse of Guelph, doesn’t entirely agree with me. array of people. Any online search will produce reams of “Knitting can be a soft intervention into the realm of the websites like menwhoknit.com and announcements for queer political,” she says, “but it is still an intervention.” A published knitting circles like the Knotty Knitters in B.C. or QueerJoe’s author on the history of third-wave feminist magazines and Knitting blog. These days, any attempt to imbue handicrafts DIY culture, Groeneveld gently warns me about making with any one specific set of values or beliefs or group identity such hasty judgments. She’s also an activist who has balanced could send me running in circles. both worlds, knitting socks and sweaters for enjoyment, But I’m still running in circles. I love my new hobby while along with anti-war arm patches to protest against the military simultaneously feeling reluctant to embrace it unconditionally incursion in Iraq. as a feminist or an activist. Perhaps crafting can mean many “You could certainly argue that crafting is a return to do- things to different people. But it will always be unlike fishing, mesticity and the private sphere,” she admits, insisting that gardening or woodworking—productive hobbies that have more “it’s a turn with a difference. The DIY craft feminist universe potential to maintain at least a little neutrality in the face of doesn’t exist on some separate planet from mainstream culture. political and social change. Handicrafts will always be linked to They feed into and shape each other in complex ways. While the history of women’s work, with its multiple meanings, em- feminist crafting certainly comes out of DIY feminist zine powering or oppressive—or both at the same time. 

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 19 Bastards &Bullies DOROTHY PALMER GIVES VOICE TO VOICELESS

BY NIRANJANA IYER

When Fenelon Falls is a tragicomic story set in 1969 in Ontario’s cottage country. It features a young girl, Jordan, who is adopted and disabled. In this interview author Dorothy Palmer talks about activism, feminism and writing with fearless wit.

HERIZONS: Was writing a dream deferred, as it is for many women who must choose between the demands of domesticity and art? DOROTHY PALMER: For most of my life, writing wasn’t a dream deferred that dried up in the sun—it never saw the sun. While I had the typical double day in terms of managing any job and the demands of home and children, I had a triple day as an English and drama teacher and a union branch president. I would typically have both lunch and after-school rehearsals and then an evening union meeting, after which I would face 30-odd Hamlet essays. For the 23 years I was a teacher, there was no dreaming to defer—between fatigue and insufficient hours in the day already, there was simply no time to dream.

Tell me about the genesis of your novel. What did you set out to achieve? DOROTHY PALMER: Since I was a teenager, I longed to see someone like me in a book, and never did. I wrote to hear

Dorothy Palmer taught high school drama for 23 years before her debut novel, When a voice I’d never heard, either in Canadian literature or later Fenelon Falls, was published last year by Coach House Press. in broader feminist fiction or academia: the modern

20 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS “Since I was a teenager, I longed to see someone like me in a book, and never did. I wrote to hear a voice I’d never heard.” —Dorothy Palmer doppelganger of Canada’s girl orphan icon, Anne of Green are, a bastard, being used as a daily swear word. Gables. I wanted to write a novel about a red-haired adoptee Reader reactions to the concepts of bastardism have ranged who knows it’s more than hair making her angry, who does from exuberant support to disbelief, ridicule, scorn and outrage. far more about it than break a slate over Gilbert Blythe’s head. That’s fine. Women who speak out about any oppression face a When Fenelon Falls is about things that fall—Jordan, a girl mixed public reaction. I’m not trying to set up a contest or scale with a limp, Yogi, an entrapped bear, and all of the bystanders of oppression. I’m simply saying that including adopted oppres- who should have stood up and done something about the sions may help us to better connect and explore the intersections falling they enabled and witnessed. and interweavings of many kinds of oppressions.

Your protagonist, Jordan, like you, was born in the 1950s, grew How do your gender and your disability influence perceptions of up in Toronto and summered in cottage country. Like you, Jordan your writing? is adopted and disabled. Could you talk about writing fiction that’s DOROTHY PALMER: While I’ve recently heard more than based on your own life? one Canadian critic arrogantly suggest it is passé to do so, I DOROTHY PALMER: Alice Munroe said some years ago take the issue of appropriation of voice very seriously. I’m not that she no longer liked the term “autobiographical fiction” a tourist adoptee or a tourist disabled person—both are my lived because it had the cast of being a smaller, somehow less au- experiences and deserve authentic hearings in literature. When thentic kind of writing done by women. Not that I see this I was pitching When Felelon Falls to a well-respected editor, he in your question, but to my mind Canadian women writers said, “You don’t look handicapped. I mean—it’s good that you are still more often asked about and somehow tacitly dismissed are, but it’s too damned bad you have such an Anglo name.” I as writing “just autobiography,” which carries the suggestion suggested that the essence of disabled and adopted oppression that autobiographical content is some kind of safe blueprint is that both are always judged as second-place “bastardized or crutch. “Just” implies that fiction with less autobiographical versions” of those who are neither; that, in fact, I had no idea content is somehow a) the domain of real writers, namely, if I was Anglo or not, as adoptees don’t know this information. men, and b) real fiction, a more pure or literary art form. He shrugged, “Yeah, but you’re still gonna look pretty normal Obviously, many novels draw on autobiography, but nobody and pretty WASP on the back cover.” ever suggested that Faulkner or Dickens wrote “just autobi- ography.” While the settings are all real, When Fenelon Falls The novel’s blurb says that the book “will take you to a time and has far too much fiction in it to ever be considered “just” a place that was never as idyllic as it seemed.” I love how fearlessly memoir—its plot and commentary are larger than one life, your novel debunks myths—about carefree childhoods, about nur- and certainly far larger than mine. turing adoptive families, about cheerful orphans and, perhaps, My novel is informed by years of working in my union and about Canada itself. Tell us about the act of creating art that is school board against other oppressions, against racism, bully- unafraid to ask tough questions? ing, sexual harassment and homophobia. My analysis and DOROTHY PALMER: I’ve spent over two decades being practice was always as two things: as an adult adoptee who diplomatic to teenagers, so I feel I’ve earned my niceness stripes almost passed as “normal” and as a disabled woman with a and don’t have to put up with any more guff. And beyond the disability that almost let me pass in the walking world. Jordan personal, fear and shame have silenced too many disabled and makes many analogies between sexism, racism and what she adopted people for too long. Doris Lessing once said that a calls “bastardism.” She sees bastardism as systemic, as built writer is responsible to those who have no voice, and I feel right into everything—language, children’s stories, television responsible to all the Jordans of the world to try and speak and books—and she knows her brother doesn’t see it because the de-sentimentalized stories of their lives. he’s a boy, because he’s privileged, “to the bloodline born.” He But of course I’m afraid to ask these questions. It terrified me. never has to think about how painful it is to hear what you Jordan comes out of the adopted/disabled closet and asks all the

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 21 something’s rotten in the state of democracy

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22 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS kinds of questions that no good girl from the 1950s could ever Your novel is set in 1969—a watershed year that saw a re-examination ask growing up. The answers she gets are inexplicably painful of attitudes towards existing cultural and social norms—and your for me. But that’s exactly why such questions had to be asked. new novel is set around another watershed event—last year’s protests against the G20 summit in Toronto. Do you see another shift in at- For all the weight of the themes, the book is funny with a very titudes crystallizing around these protests and their aftermath? sharp edge. And you’ve coached improv comedy. How do you use humour in your writing and in your activism? DOROTHY PALMER: Whether or not the G20 protests represent a similar awakening on the part of the average DOROTHY PALMER: George Bernard Shaw was bang on Canadian, it is simply too early to say, but my second novel, when he said, “When a thing is funny, search it carefully for Kerfuffle, is indeed one small fictional step in exploring that a hidden truth.” As a coach of high school improv, I have been possibility. It’s the story of a culturally diverse, five-member an utterly gobsmacked witness to so many riveting moments where teenagers used comedy to explore heartbreaking mo- improv troupe trying to make sense and nonsense during the ments of their lives and did so with such empathy that it weekend of last summer’s G20, when Toronto was literally transcended traditionally exclusive definitions of what is sad burning down around their heads. The book is inspired by the and what is funny. That’s the kind of blending I hoped to now-iconic photo of a boy leaping atop a flaming police car bring to Jordan’s voice. and the story of a disabled protestor relaxing on the grass at I’ll give you one small example of humour in daily activism. Queen’s Park who was ordered to remove his prosthetic leg. I believe able-bodied people should be able to make up all the Kerfuffle attempts to explore a question that has haunted me rules they want for each other, but they don’t have the right all my life, asked in the 1960s by Carl Oglesby, leader of to oppress me with them. For instance, it incenses me that Students for a Democratic Society: “When the house is burn- the able-bodied can decide whether or not to pay a nickel for ing down around the poet’s head, on grounds of what if any a plastic bag or carry a purchase in hand, but I don’t have that dispensation can the poet continue the poem?” choice. Yesterday in the grocery store, when asked if I wanted Kerfuffle answers that question with the look, feel and a bag, I answered, “No thanks, just tie the bag of milk to my structure of an improv game, providing answers as diverse as crutch please.” The clerk burst out laughing and said, “You the troupe itself. Words work as fire and the means to quench know, I never thought of it that way, but of course you need it. As a woman writer in Canada, I’m working to discover how a bag. That doesn’t seem fair, does it?” to wield them both. 

WHEN FENELON FALLS draws to an end, things fall apart under the DOROTHY PALMER weight of truths unuttered. Coach House Press Palmer’s writing is sharp and edgy, and the narrator’s voice, driven by a palpable sense of REVIEW BY NIRANJANA IYER rage and betrayal, pulls no punches in its indict- It’s the summer of 1969, and 14-year-old Jordan ment of a society that deliberately refused to May March is figuring out her tenuous place in recognize the abuse of the weak. Twisting her family, in society and in the world. through the story is a thread of humour that Jordan is adopted and disabled, and is thus leavens the narrative while highlighting the considered fair game for her family’s cruelty, unfairness of it all—Jordan, for all her intelli- especially from the cousins who gather each gence and wit, is essentially a child looking to summer at the family cottage in Fenelon Falls. belong, in a world that repeatedly informs her Jordan’s fierce intelligence, while enabling that she’s “a fluke of the universe/with no right small acts of revenge, is also her downfall, for to be here.” she senses the true animosity that lies beneath When Fenelon Falls is saturated with rich the teasing and is unable to fool herself into thinking that it’ll get detail about Ontario in the ’50s and ’60s—from the clothes, to better. Jordan finds solace in guessing the identities of her bio- the music, to casual bigotry back then—and the narrative vividly logical parents (she records a hundred different scenarios of illustrates what a complex, problematic, fractured, fertile era it her conception and birth in her journal), in listening to ’60s pop was. If you know someone who insists that Canadian society on her radio and in hatching plans to save Yogi, a caged bear was easier to navigate before the advent of multiculturalism, who’s bullied by tourists and residents alike. As the summer give them this book and then watch them squirm.

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 23 LESSONSLESSONS ININ TTRANSGRANSG

Broke Back Mountain, Bonnie Marin, 2008, oil paint and collage

24 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS RESSIONSRESSIONSARTIST BONNIE MARIN EXPLORES GENDER, DESIRE & CULTURE

BY SHAWNA DEMPSEY

t 6 a.m., Bonnie Marin begins another day cooking enthusiasm for art-making is undampened by circumstance. over a hot grill. Breakfast orders pour in, but as When asked what her greatest achievement is to date, she A always her mind is elsewhere. She daydreams of replies without hesitation. giant storks standing on wet floors. Pan-gendered hybrids. “The ability to make art after all these years,” she explains. Muscles and desire exposed for all the world to see. “It isn’t easy, but I know so many people I went to art school If she’s lucky, she’ll be in the studio by 2 p.m.—the studio with who don’t. That I’m persevering is a huge accomplish- where her other work takes place. Marin creates paintings, ment. It took me a long time before I called myself an artist. sculptures and collages in the furnace room of the bungalow But working in the studio, even if I have already had a really she shares with her partner of 19 years. Narrow, winding steps hard day, makes me happy. I can’t imagine not making things. lead from her kitchen to this dark cavern of wonders below. It is who I am.” “Be careful not to hit your head,” Marin cautions. As a child growing up in The Pas, Manitoba, Marin was She effortlessly navigates the labyrinthine paths of her very much a tomboy, always making things, moulding workspace with the knowing of a sleepwalker. This is her Plasticine or building go-carts. Her carpenter-father was an domain, an impossibly small space filled with thousands of early influence and a ready source of tools. Then, in the artworks, some finished and other in-progress, a water heater, fourth grade, she discovered something that changed her a washing machine and a woodshop. Old magazines and oil life: an art history book in the public library. She set out to paints share a work bench. A lamp balances on the dryer. And repaint every image it contained. Ironically, more than a magic is made. decade later, when she went to art school, the same book Marin’s artworks have been exhibited nationally and inter- was her first textbook. The professor asked her to memorize nationally, in artist-run centres, in regional galleries and recently the great works pictured. “Memorize?” she thought. “I’ve as part of Plug In ICA’s exhibition My Winnipeg at two already painted them!” venues in France. They are part of the permanent collections That four-inch-thick textbook, H.W. Janson’s History of of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Calgary’s Glenbow Museum. Art, contained no artworks by women. Such was the gender Her work has even entered the private collection of a minor bias in art education into the 1980s. The Old Masters were Hollywood celeb. Yet this somewhat reclusive Winnipeg visual men. Old Mistresses were not acknowledged, other than as artist continues to work as a short-order cook five days a week. small-m mistresses and muses. In fact, Marin says didn’t know Such is the economic reality for most artists in Canada. she could become an artist until she was in her 20s. Even though she hates getting up in the morning and is “Looking at art history, I thought it was something people often exhausted by the demands of two jobs, Marin’s had already done and was no longer an option,” she says. And

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 25 so she decided upon becoming a lawyer. Luckily, outdoor practice, she also freely mixes gender, races, even species in sculptures by John McEwen and visiting artists such as Jeffry erotic environments that are part middle-class 1950s normalcy Spalding at the University of Lethbridge opened her eyes to and part spectacles of perversity. the potential of contemporary art, and reawakened her creativ- Marin remembers spending long hours in her small-town ity. She found herself back in Manitoba at the University of movie theatre, watching B movies and imagining entering the Manitoba fine arts program. proscenium. Her work is likewise theatrical and reminiscent of It was a circuitous journey from the northern Manitoba of bygone pop culture, but transgressively so. Perfectly groomed her youth. The Pas of Marin’s childhood was racially divided, pin-ups pose with rodents on mid-century furniture. Naked made infamous by the brutal killing of Helen Betty Osborne. men navigate Winnipeg’s Portage and Main intersection wear- As a young dyke, it was understandably difficult at times. ing blindfolds. Flayed figures from vintage anatomy textbooks “Growing up knowing I was gay, especially then, the ’70s and pose as anatomical studies of both strength and vulnerability. ’80s, was a lot harder than it is now. There were no role models Often her work takes images that have traditionally been on TV. It was so narrow-minded. More than homophobia, the objectified and places them in disquieting settings to upset racism infected everything and was one of the reasons I was the usual power imbalance. Implicitly feminist and definitely happy to leave. But, happily, it has changed. When I go home queer, her camp images and assemblages mix social commentary now, I notice a lot more native-run businesses.” and humour in ways that question history as well as traditional Much has changed during Marin’s lifetime. Not only has expectations of gender and sexual expression. Canada become less racially polarized, gay people have won One of her collages recently appeared in the international rights unimagined 30 years ago. Artists like Marin have been publication Le Monde, and publicity about the exhibition in part of the social context that enabled such strides for gay and France has been uniformly positive. Marin reached a wide lesbian people. Not only does she have a truly mixed media audience in her home city of Winnipeg in 2010 through her

26 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS OPPOSITE PAGE (counter clockwise): The Boys in the Lab, Bonnie Marin, 2006, oil paint and collage; “I hate doing couples!” Bonnie Marin, 2005, oil paint and collage; Confusion Corner! Winnipeg Tarot Company, Bonnie Marin, 2010, oil paint and collage.

LEFT: Home on the Range, Bonnie Marin, 2006, oil paint and collage.

BELOW (left to right): “They hung up, it must have been a wrong number” Or was it? Bonnie Marin, 2006, oil paint and collage; “I love how he goes with every- thing!” Bonnie Marin, 2005, collage.

illustration of a Winnipeg-specific tarot card deck produced as part of a project that celebrated Winnipeg as the Cultural Capital of Canada (see sidebar). Her work also graces the cover of Chandra Mayor’s recent book of short stories, All The Pretty Girls. Even the commercial art world has taken notice, and Marin is currently represented by Mayberry Fine Art. Marin celebrates each exhibition, major sale and commis- sion with a new tattoo. She is literally inscribed with symbols of her own accomplishment, each one designed with the same care she takes with her artwork. The career of artist Bonnie Marin is cooking, in more ways than one. The piles of art in the basement may ebb and flow, sales and exhibitions may temporarily dent the stacks, but Marin keeps creating. Her life’s work—making—began in her father’s shop, developed with an art history book at the kitchen table and continues each day after the lunch rush is over. As Marin says, “Even if I am not in the studio, I am thinking about my artwork. How am I going to approach to it? “Thinking about art, figuring out what I’m going to do, that part is hard. But making, making is fun time. Making is playing. And besides, I have no choice. It is what I have to do.” 

A GREAT DEAL OF INSPIRATION Masterminded by performance artists Shawna Dempsey Visual artist Bonnie Marin’s paintings lavish the stunnin g and Lorri Millan, who led tarot readings throughout the city and wondrously queer Winnipeg Tarot Company tarot in 2010, the Winnipeg Tarot Company deck explores gender deck. Even if you aren’t into card readings, you’ll want to and mythology with a signature Marin sensibility and wit. own this deck, in which each of the 78 cards features a Each deck comes complete with an interpretive guide clever, Winnipeg-ish interpretation. The traditional fire, to the tarot. Available from the Winnipeg Tarot Company water, air and earth suits are reimagined as lightning, for $30 plus $1.50 GST ($31.50). Email [email protected] to floods, blizzards and drought, and major arcana include arrange pick up in Winnipeg or to place your order for The Fool on Garbage Hill. shipments in Canada for an additional $11 ($42.50).

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 27 HOW FEMINISM CAN HELP YOUR LIFE SEXBY MANDY VAN DEVEN

Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s latest book, Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Jaclyn Friedman’s latest book, What You Really, Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame- Life, encourages readers to view their dating lives in the same way they view their Free Guide to Sex and Safety, can help women dismantle sexualization by developing a political values. strong, healthy sense of their authentic sexuality.

When feminists began identifying the gender dynamics that stifled them in their intimate relationships, it opened the door for sweeping changes in the realms of dating, sex and love. As a result, many of the social limitations that hinged on outmoded gender roles have been altered significantly over the past 50 years. Yet the rules about how to create and sustain romantic relationships have largely remained stagnant.

ecognizing a neglected niche, two contemporary HERIZONS: Why did you decide to write a self-help book for authors have entered the uncharted waters of femi- young women? R nist self-help in order to help women find sexual SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY: Feminism has done an satisfaction and fulfilling relationships. Outdated: Why Dating incredible job of articulating all the different places where women is Ruining Your Love Life by Feministing’s Samhita Mukho- experience inequality, and there is a set barometer of what is and padhyay examines archaic notions that remain embedded in is not sexism that is great for political interventions, developing modern romance and explains why media depictions of rela- legislation and policy, and academic work. But creating the tools tionships lag behind the times. In What You Really, Really for how to use feminism in your daily life, especially in your Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety, interpersonal life, is a different project than creating feminist Jaclyn Friedman tackles the myths and realities of female analysis. That particular nuts-and-bolts piece of feminism hasn’t sexuality while providing activities that guide readers through been prioritized, and there is a gap in the knowledge of how a process of sexual self-discovery. to apply feminism to your personal life in a way that takes into 28 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS “This new version of patriarchy is so good at making it look like women are free, and we’re in this moment where everything women do is supposedly empowerment.”—Samhita Mukhopadhyay account how patriarchy functions and also how we function as story hurts people’s happiness, and I think we are going to individuals. We need to find ways to be in intimate relationships see it majorly shift in our lifetimes. and deal with all these complicated politics, too. What challenges do women face in navigating love and sexuality? JACLYN FRIEDMAN: I’m not a huge consumer of self-help books, but there have been a few that really influenced me, like SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY: A big challenge young The Artist’s Way, The Courage to Heal, and My Gender Workbook. women face in their interpersonal lives is negotiating between These books gave me a framework that could actually be helpful. their politics and what they want. A lot of young women imagine The way the idea for What You Really, Really Want came to me being in an equal partnership, or imagine the kind of wedding was actually very simple. A question was repeatedly asked during they are going to have, but then it doesn’t really happen because the tour for my last book, Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual there are all of these larger systems that impact relationships. Power and A World Without Rape, that basically went like this: “I The wedding industrial complex has a lot of say over the kind love what you’re talking about, and I love enthusiastic consent. of wedding you have, and its traditional underpinnings implicate But how do I figure out what I want to say yes to?” In trying to modern choices in ways that are difficult to circumvent. answer this question again and again, I realized that I know a Similarly, in interpersonal relationships there are all of these lot of answers to that question and that I know a lot of others assumptions about men being less emotional or not as engaged who can answer that question, but I wasn’t able to answer it in in the relationship, but that is not necessarily true. There are five minutes. So, this book is really a framework to help readers a lot of men who want to be in long-term, intimate relation- find the answer for themselves in a culture that sends incredibly ships and to do the emotional work. These social norms put a mixed messages about women and sexuality. lot of pressure on women to be the ones who have to do that emotional work, and the tools we have to hold men accountable How does your identity as a feminist inform the ideas in your book? are implicated in this larger system of heterosexuality, marriage JACLYN FRIEDMAN: A lot of my work has to do with and monogamy. So it’s very difficult to navigate these things. slut-shaming and sexual violence, which is stuff I’ve experi- JACLYN FRIEDMAN: Blame, shame and fear are three enced in my own life. A lot of mainstream culture has adopted primary tactics used to alienate women and keep us from faux-feminist language and imagery and sold it to us as “lib- determining our own sexuality. These tactics are very popular eration,” when in fact it is just the status quo. I’m thinking and manipulative in their ability to keep us controlled and about how the riot girl slogan “grrrl power” became the slogan contained. A lot of people participate in these tactics whose of the Spice Girls, but those two things are so different. It’s intentions aren’t specifically about control, but that is the rea- confusing to talk about the difference between our individual son those systems were built and what they’re ultimately for. right to express our sexuality however we want to, as long as If people get nothing else from my book, the thing I want we’re not hurting anybody, and what is sold to us as sexual them to get is that unless you’re hurting somebody else your empowerment. There is a difference between sexuality and sexuality is okay. We get the exact opposite message every day sexualization, and my book is a tool in the work to dismantle through advertising, all forms of media, friends and family, sexualization, which can happen if enough of us develop a religious leaders and people in government. The heart of the strong, healthy sense of our authentic sexuality. book is about encouraging readers to accept themselves and SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY: A big myth in the media accept the limitations that society or the media lays on them, is that feminism killed romance because traditional ideas of because once you accept them you can start to build a sexuality romance rely on an antiquated sense of relationships and gen- that works for you. As much as possible, I wanted to be sure der differences—such as that men are in charge or should be the book wasn’t prescriptive. Instead, I wanted to pose a set of the primary breadwinner in a marriage. The reality is that we questions for each person to figure out what their own answers don’t even live in a world anymore where most households can are, because the way I’ve come to figure out the answers for live off of a single income and for most couples, both people myself is through a lot of trial and error, practice and reading in the relationship are working. Even though there are actual about other people’s work. changes in our behaviour, the story about romance doesn’t want to budge. We are at an impasse where women not working Was it difficult to write a book to guide women through struggles or getting an education isn’t realistic, or isn’t what’s best for when those struggles aren’t universal? women. So what has to happen is that the over-reliance on SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY: It’s difficult in the sense this nostalgic sense of romance needs to break down. That that my writing has come from women-of-colour feminism, HERIZONS WINTER 2012 29 “Blame, shame and fear are three primary tactics used to alienate women and keep us from determining our own sexuality.” —Jaclyn Friedman and I can only write about my community and myself. However, sexualization and create a world where sexuality is a positive I didn’t feel a particular need to speak to everybody. There is force instead of something that’s used against them. obviously no universal experience in the specific, day-to-day SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY: This new version of patriar- choices that women make, but the fear of being alone is defi- chy is so good at making it look like women are free, and we’re nitely an idea that a lot of women are experiencing. in this moment where everything women do is supposedly I have found more women of colour are interested in my empowerment. Having sex all the time can be empowerment book because statistically many of them are single and strug- for some, but it’s also not empowerment when it’s done in the gling to make ends meet. When we talk about the need to space of abstinence-only education and lack of access to proper redefine marriage to include LGBTQ people, nobody talks reproductive health care. about how working-class, single mothers aren’t benefitting from Access to feminism, or the idea that you have the right to heteronormativity, even though they may identify as straight. So live for yourself and determine what you really want, is the I look at the way heteronormativity first step in figuring out how to creates marginalized communities decipher all the conflicting mes- out of unsuspecting people and sages young women have coming how assumptions about romance at them. People are really quick to and dating directly implicate our throw young women under the lives in the sense of what resources bus and say they’re not good at we have access to and how we are navigating the really complicated protected by the government. terrain of sexuality, but I think a JACLYN FRIEDMAN: When lot of young women are navigating I sat down to write the book pro- it really well. posal, I realized the scope of the Does feminism make your love project would have been too great life better? if I had tried to write the book for people of all genders, which JACLYN FRIEDMAN: If what was my first intention. The subject matter was just too big you want is to be sexually appealing to as many people as pos- to cover in a practical sense. What I did was put out a call sible, feminism may not help you with that goal because it is for volunteers to give feedback on the book and wound up ultimately about satisfying other people, not yourself. What with a group of 11 women with a wide range of experiences, feminism can do is help you become more confident in your identities and backgrounds who ranged in age from 19 to 42. intuition about people, more appealing to people who appreciate They were sent a draft of each chapter every week to read women who are complex and whole, and more likely to have and complete all of the exercises. Then we’d talk about their satisfying, soul- and body-fulfilling experiences with the people experiences. Telling me what worked and what didn’t work for you do decide to be sexual with. them really helped shape the book, and their voices are woven SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY: I’m 33, single and really throughout. I hope that will make the reader feel less alone. happy in my life. Of course, it’s constant maintenance to be happy, but I’ve found that feminism helped me to be comfort- There seems to be a ton of confusion about what is and isn’t feminist able with the reality that I could be on my own. That sounds when it comes to dating, sex and relationships. How can people so “cult of the single girl,” but it’s really one of those areas sort out their authentic desires from social influence? where I faked it till I made it. For a long time I had “I don’t JACLYN FRIEDMAN: The first thing is to accept that there need a man” on repeat, but I didn’t really mean it, and all of is no way to fully separate the two. You can’t ever un-socialize my behaviour was reinforcing that I hella needed a man. Now yourself to the point of being a blank slate. There’s no possibil- I’ve transitioned into this place where I truly do not need a ity of getting to a state of pure authenticity, because we’ve all man, and it’s actually really peaceful. been influenced. What I really encourage is to become aware It opened me up to the possibility of a completely differ- of the ways you’ve been influenced, and to make decisions ent life for myself. That doesn’t mean I’m not open to future about which influences you want to turn the volume up on relationships. It’s just that I have the confidence to focus on and which you want to turn down. I’m really excited about my other things in my life that I find just as valuable, like writing book’s potential to help strengthen women’s ability to resist a book about dating! 

30 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS Body Politic BY JOANNA CHIU

BRIDGING THE GENDER GAP AT OCCUPY

Viewers around the world watched via live feed as police roughly as many women as men, and many of the women I dispersed and arrested hundreds of people protesting peace- met were active members of subgroups such as the people of fully in lower Manhattan. A flank of police in riot gear colour working group and the safer-space caucus. I also saw surrounded the camp of remaining protesters in Zuccotti socialists, libertarians, religious leaders, veterans, seniors, Park. As police encircled the huddled protesters to make children and queer and transgender people—a picture of the their final arrests, a woman turned to the camera and, diversity that is usually absent in mainstream media depic- with grit and composure, implored viewers to support the tions of the protesters. Occupy Wall Street movement. Is there sexism in the Occupy Wall Street movement? After Occupy Wall Street began in New York in September, Yes there is, and that’s partly because of the fact that sex- the movement quickly spread to over 1,500 cities, attracting ism exists in all the places around the world where the hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets to pro- Occupy movement has spread. Recently, there have been test economic inequality and government corruption. When well-publicized complaints of sexual harassment and even police forced occupiers in Canada and the U.S. to leave their reports of sexual assault at Occupy sites in Dallas, New sites in November using pepper spray and dragging women by York and Ottawa. Interestingly, while critics pounced on their hair, the protesters only grew stronger in their resolve. these incidents as a way to discredit the movement, many While the Occupy Wall Street movement has been feminists ramped up their efforts to improve the movement criticized for not having clear goals, it has been powerful from within. They have set up women-only tents, supported enough to bring together people of different ages, back- women in obtaining legal and counselling services and es- grounds and political affiliations in relative harmony. And tablished safer space or anti-oppression caucuses. Women’s that is something to celebrate. presence is further seen in groups like Code Pink and the There is, after all, a tendency for movements on the left website, OccupyPatriarchy.org, whose members are trying to splinter into separate groups and lose momentum, but to empower female occupiers to network and work together this hasn’t happened so much with Occupy Wall Street. As to improve safety and feminist consciousness within the a participant and a media outreach volunteer for SlutWalk Occupy Wall Street movement. marches, I saw how the SlutWalk movement divided femi- Feminists involved in the Occupy movement are also nists. Even though most feminists agreed with the goal of raising awareness that women and minorities suffer dis- ending victim-blaming, I found it disheartening that many proportionately from economic inequalities. Women make critics who disagreed with reclaiming the word “slut,” or considerably less money than men working the same jobs who criticized SlutWalk’s racial and class privilege, did not with women of colour being paid even less; women are also decide to join the movement to change it from within. much more likely to do unpaid work such as child care and I have seen something different within the Occupy Wall elder care and to be single parents. Street movement. Many feminists have had criticisms, but this Movements with as much momentum and widespread has not kept them from playing active roles within the move- support as Occupy Wall Street are hard to come by. For ment. And despite the mocking media coverage of protestors all of these reasons and many more, women and minorities as lazy hippies and disgruntled youth, many people have rec- worldwide need to become more involved in the Occupy ognized the key issues occupiers are fighting against: extreme Wall Street movement. economic inequality and the lack of accountability that comes This is a teachable moment for all progressive activ- with the top one percent of the wealthiest people in society ists. Rather than lobbing criticisms from the sidelines, we wielding too much economic and political power. should increase our involvement and educate and engage Since I’m spending much of my time in New York City, others. Only by doing so can we make sure women’s voices I went to talk to the protesters at Zuccotti Park. I saw are heard.  HERIZONS WINTER 2012 31 Help Build a Sustainable

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BY BRITTANY SHOOT

Julia Ivanova has made several films about adoption and relationships across borders, including Family Portrait in Black and White, which was named best Canadian film at Hot Docs 2011.

rans-racial adoption in Russia. Dating tourism in the In the Soviet Union, adoption was a secretive process. Ukraine. Compulsory marriage in Canada. These “We never knew children who were adopted in the Soviet T divergent, unrelated topics might seem like an odd Union,” she says, and people went to great lengths to conceal array of subjects on which to base a career. But for Vancou- their family makeup. “Families faked pregnancies and claimed ver-based filmmaker Julia Ivanova, whose feature-length they had biological children,” she explains. When she began documentaries tackle these diverse topics with generous meeting adoptive parents as part of her new job, she was struck sensitivity, chronicling stories of love and connection across not only by the openness of the process but by the adoptive borders is a natural impulse and one with which she’s parents themselves. become increasingly skilled. “I was amazed by how wonderful and generous the people Along with her entire family—brother Boris, with whom she were. Their ability to love a child who was not their biological frequently collaborates, and her parents, husband and daugh- child was something I admired, and I wanted to tell the world ter—Ivanova immigrated to Canada in 1995. As she tells it, how great they are,” she explains. the Chechen war was going the wrong way politically, and after Inspired by her discovery, she began work on her first film, the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the film industry. Though From Russia, For Love, which she wrote, directed and produced she studied producing at Moscow’s Gerasimov Institute of entirely on her own. Following two Canadian families going Cinematography, she had no luck finding film work in Canada. through the international adoption process in Russia, Ivanova Initially, she worked as an information officer at an embassy. filmed their initial adoption journeys and later returned to In 1997, after securing a job as an adoption coordinator, explore how adoption had changed the families’ lives. Ivanova became interested in making a film about adoption. One family had returned to Russia to adopt their daughter’s

34 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS brother, only to find that the children had eight more siblings family values to explain why they’ve travelled to find love. divided amongst several orphanages. Without exploiting the The women, dubbed “professional brides” by local skeptics, families’ difficulties or sensationalizing the adoptive parents, are often shown running up bills on the men’s credit cards Ivanova was able to capture the details of their stories. before becoming mysteriously unavailable for future phone Several friends helped her edit the film, and in 2001 her conversations or dates. work finally paid off. The film was picked up for distribution Once again employing compassion for her subjects, Ivanova and eventually shown on TV in 26 countries. At the time, makes their rather unpolished attempts at finding love seem she had no understanding of her own breakthrough success. sympathetic, even relatable. “In a way, the film gives access to “I had no idea it was such a glorious beginning,” she recalls. the way many men look at women,” she explains. Being a transplant herself, Ivanova credits her outsider Despite the success of her other films, Ivanova suggests status as a huge advantage for her work. “When I work with that Love Translated has not been more widely received Canadian subjects, the people I film are never intimidated by or accepted into festivals because of the objective way she me. I speak English worse than they do. They can feel more shows both sides of the story. “I made an honest film,” she confident and comfortable because I never pose a threat.” explains. “I have strong belief in good human nature. I Working with her brother Boris, Ivanova went on to make never have mean intentions. I would never exploit people.” several more successful films about adoption and relationships She believes that because of her uncensored look at dat- across borders. One of her recent works, Family Portrait in ing tourism, some people misunderstand her intentions in Black and White, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival making Love Translated. and went on to be named best Canadian film at Hot Docs Regardless of her own discomfort with elements of the tour, 2011. The film follows Olga Nenya, a white adoptive mother Ivanova explains that she was true to her role as an objective in the Ukraine who has 16 children; all of them are black. In observer. “I was upset that these men liked younger women this predominantly white country with an unwavering fascist to wear short skirts and heels. I wear pants all the time,” she stronghold, black children born to single mothers are often says to explain her hesitation. But, she says, “It really upset abandoned or persecuted. me when I realized those elements are that important to the The film explores Nenya’s commitment to “the children no story. We can deny and rebel as women against the value of one wants,” as well as the contradictions and limitations of age and sexy dressing. I am upset that it matters. But it does her stern, controlling parenting style. Social workers criticize matter. So as a filmmaker, I show that it matters, despite the her cramped home, and families abroad offer to adopt some fact that it upsets me.” of Nenya’s children. She steadfastly refuses to compromise, Today, she sees a shortage of opportunities for new filmmak- and Ivanova again delivers a striking film about the complex ers. Fewer outlets are available for selling documentary films, issues faced by intentionally blended families. and producers have to work twice as hard to be noticed. Back Further exploring the concept of family, Ivanova directed when From Russia, For Love was released, Ivanova says, “It was Fatherhood Dreams, a one-hour documentary from 2007 possible to make [and sell] one-off films,” meaning non-serial about gay men seeking to become fathers. True Love or documentary films. “Thanks to the people who worked back Marriage Fraud? The Price of Heartache, a film about im- then, especially at CBC’s The Passionate Eye, we got started. migration and marriage in Canada, aired on the CBC News There were many television stations that would show such Network in 2010. films,” she said. But today she believes the documentary market The most entertaining of Ivanova’s films to date is Love has shrunk by 70 percent, focusing instead on reality shows Translated, a controversial documentary that follows men and series. “The way I started would be a highly unlikely way from Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Sweden on a one-week to start your career today,” she laments. dating tour in Odessa, Ukraine. The men and women who In the future, Ivanova would like to return to subjects like take part in the week-long liaisons sponsored by Ukrainian adoption and immigration and to make films about other dating service Anastasia International often act like caricatures, marginalized families. Because of her childhood in the Soviet pandering to gender and cultural norms while trying to seduce Union, she shies away from political films and says she’ll never and take advantage of one another. make anything that could be construed as propaganda. “I am Trading in stereotypes as they seek out potential partners, not interested in those things,” she says. “I believe documentary the men use tired tropes about companionship and Ukrainian is supposed to show the world the way it is.” 

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 35 RADICAL HOMEMAKER

Stirsthe

PotBY TINA VASQUEZ

fter obtaining degrees in creative writing and sustain- able agriculture and community development, Shannon A Hayes set out to make her career path work in a way that was consistent with her ecological values. Today, Hayes and her partner work, along with Hayes’ parents, on the family farm in West Fulton, New York, where Shannon grew up. Hayes is the author of The Grassfed Gourmet and Farmer and the Grill. Her third book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, is the result of research and interviews with self-described radical homemakers, capital and creates a life-serving economy, but how does it empower people who embrace the simple principles of ecological women? sustainability, social justice, community engagement and family well-being. SHANNON HAYES: Radical homemaking is not a woman- only movement. It is a venture that all members of a household HERIZONS: The tag line to Radical Homemaker is “Reclaiming are pursuing together. Sometimes the man works outside the Domesticity from a Consumer Culture.” Given the ways domesticity house, sometimes the woman, sometimes neither. Nearly half has been used to confine women to the private sphere, does domes- of the participants in the study that comprises Radical ticity really need to be reclaimed? Homemakers were men. The end goal is to empower folks to SHANNON HAYES: This suggests that the home has histori- live lives that honour ecological sustainability, social justice, cally been the sphere of the woman. In truth, this was not the family and community. The results from the interviews I did case. The home has historically been the sphere of both men showed greater economic stability—although not excessive and women as domestic partners working together for the well- wealth by any means—than the typical American family. being of the household. The notion of the home being a woman’s Do you believe radical homemaking is a feminist movement? At sphere only came into play after the Industrial Revolution. times, it feels as if the book advocates for women to stay home and What is the end goal of this reclamation? The book makes it quite devote themselves to their family and their homes. clear how homesteading benefits local communities, builds social SHANNON HAYES: Yes, I see Radical Homemakers as part of

36 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS deepening understanding of the values of feminism. The book resources, many of the homemakers featured in the book capitalized does not advocate that women “stay home.” It advocates that on family resources, such as loans and land. How does race and class men and women make the home a centre of production, rather factor in to radical homemaking? than a centre of consumption. This is a way to reduce their overall SHANNON HAYES: The fundamental skills of radical cost of living, increase community self-sufficiency, enable our homemaking all stem from Indigenous traditions. It seems culture to untie itself from multinational corporate domination strange to characterize the skill sets as attributable to white of our lives and improve quality of life. As the profiles in the privilege, when they are prevalent and, today, generally far book suggest, there is nary a woman featured in the book who more effectively practiced in other races and cultures. The is simply “staying home.” Most of them have myriad enterprises homemakers came from a wide variety of backgrounds and that, while usually home-based—because, again, the home is a educational histories, from homeless high-school dropouts unit of production—are contributing to the family’s income who found their way, to others with advanced degrees. stream and economic stability in a powerful way. One of the women featured in your book talks about how even the According feminist scholar and writer Elisabeth Badinter, in her “seemingly mundane” actions of her daily home life, like making new book, Conflit, la Femme et la bread, makes her a part of something Mere (Conflict, the Woman and the bigger and tied to her to her children, Mother), the green movement is burden- her community and the earth. Is it at ing mothers with intolerable guilt unless all presumptuous to think that cooking they stay at home. How would you re- from scratch and home schooling will spond to this? make a dent in the many problems SHANNON HAYES: It doesn’t plaguing the country? sound to me as if Badinter has spent SHANNON HAYES: Americans, time with those who are successfully as a whole, need to accept account- pursuing this path. A woman who ability for their own well-being. happens to stay home and buy organic We’ve had a tradition of allowing our baby food while her husband works effluent to flow downstream—some- as an investment banker is not neces- one else will grow our food; someone sarily a radical homemaker. else will take care of our kids; some- In Radical Homemakers, you encourage Author Shannon Hayes maintains homemaking can be a radical one else will scrub the toilets; some step towards independent communities and healthy families. women to restore meaning to their lives other place can handle our waste and through education, work and community, pollution. Radical homemaking is though it is your belief that all of that starts at home. Can you talk about starting a culture of accountability in this country and more about that? that accountability builds self-reliance. Self-reliance builds resilience in our families and our communities. SHANNON HAYES: The home, or the choice to use it as Quite frankly, I think we all need to accept some degree a centre of production rather than a place to house consumer of responsibility for producing for our well-being and our goods while everyone runs off to work, has become a symbol communities’ self-sufficiency. I find the presumption that of oppression when it was once representative of middle-class someone else can do it for me if I pay them rather classist; independence and self-reliance. A lot of money gets spent, it’s also pretty dangerous. and a lot of land gets abused, and a lot of people get to work We ju st got hit by a hurricane, and three of the villages to make the rich richer. While we must have homes, the only around my home have lost their grocery stores. Those who thing they become useful for is holding consumer objects and are taking responsibility to produce for their needs have been heating up takeout. able to help a lot of others out. Plus, they didn’t get their asses It was sometimes difficult not to view the radical homemakers as in a ringer when all the major roads were shut down. The idea very privileged. To secure housing, child care, health care and other is important and imperative. 

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 37 arts culture MUSIC

Carrington writes in the liner notes that the project “is cross generational, cross cultural and, though jazz in nature, some- what cross genre.” In addition to Carrington’s always-in- the-groove drum licks, The Mosaic Project showcases the talents of artists including vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater, percussion- ist Sheila E., pianist Geri Allen, clarinetist Anat Cohen, Canadian jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and recent Grammy Award-winning bassist Esperanza Spalding. On the opening track, the haunting tune “Transformation,” former Labelle (“Lady Marmalade”) singer Nona Hendryx pays homage to the natural ebb and flow of life. Backed by Carrington’s artful arrange- ment, Gretchen Parlato brings an arresting Tania Maria-type twist to the Lennon and McCartney classic “Michelle.” Jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson exhibits her glorious gifts on “Simply Beautiful.” Written by Sweet Honey in the Rock founder Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Echo” opens with eloquent com- mentary by activist Angela Y. Davis. Then Dianne Reeves lets loose with a smoulder- ing testament on the impact of slavery. Patrice Rushen, the first woman to serve as musical director for the Grammy Awards broadcast, lends her keyboard skills to sev- eral tracks, notably “Mosaic Triad.” Vocalist Carmen Lundy, violinist Chia-Yin Carol Ma lost love. The song then crescendoes into DINAH THORPE & and guitarist Linda Taylor (who has toured a dance number that has Thorpe promis- THE FIVE WHITE GUYS with Tracy Chapman) also offer their artistry. 12 ing, “I’m getting over her.” Rapper Shea Rose closes the CD with a Independent Never wimpy when it comes to speaking funky hip-hop riff—“Sisters on the Rise (A REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO her mind, on “G20” Thorpe examines the Transformation)”—that revisits the first track. Toronto’s Dinah Thorpe is a multi-instru- police abuse that accompanied the Toronto Conventional wisdom hails Wynton mentalist, producer and writer whose G20 debacle in 2010. Marsalis as the prevailing force in jazz work defies definition. Seemingly endless- The genre-hopping Thorpe never fails performance. With The Mosaic Project, ly creative, the smoky-voiced Thorpe takes to delight on the 12 songs that comprise Terri Lyne Carrington advances the genre’s her expanding oeuvre into the realms of 12. The real surprises come in the form history and honours the scores of women jazz and country with the release of 12. of a dirge-like remake of Chris Isaak’s who’ve dedicated their lives to music. Favourably compared to Indigo Girls and painful “Wicked Game” and on “Weird,” Beth Orton, it’s fairer to say that Thorpe is which is weirdly reminiscent of early ROMI MAYES her own woman. While there’s a certain Laurie Anderson. LUCKY TONIGHT folksiness to her vocals, her music is more Well worth checking out. Independent sophisticated that that of Emily Sailers or REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO Amy Ray. As for Beth Orton? There are TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON The measure of a singer is how they come some vocal similarities between the Brit and THE MOSAIC PROJECT across in a live setting. This has always Concord Thorpe, but that’s where it ends. been the case, but in this age of Auto- Originally conceived as a song cycle REVIEW BY EVELYN C. WHITE Tuning it’s an even more pointed indicator of that featured a song per month, 12 took The Mosaic Project, arranged and pro- prowess. Winnipeg singer-songwriter Romi on a life of its own and the results are duced by veteran jazz drummer Terri Lyne Mayes proves she’s got talent in spades on stunning. “Every Bit Hurts” buries the Carrington, is a swinging, sensuous and her fifth album, hopefully named. Mayes, echo-chamber vocals under a thumping, soulful release that features a multicul- a musician and composer of considerable oppressive bass line that acts to exacer- tural mix of the best female musicians in strength, took the incredibly brave step of bate the feeling of pain that comes with the world. recording a CD worth of new songs live.

38 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS arts culture MUSIC

The result is one of the best retro coun- try albums I have heard in years, and that includes Norah Jones’ work with The Little Willies and Neko Case’s excellent solo work. What makes Lucky Tonight even more impressive is that this collec- tion of songs is entirely original. Recorded at Winnipeg’s West End Cultural Centre, Lucky Tonight captures the intimacy of the venue while delivering close to studio- quality production. From warning listeners “You don’t want to see my bad side,” on the bluesy “Don’t You Mess Me” to the driving country rock- er “Lucky Tonight,” Mayes’ vocals never fail to impress. Lucky Tonight proves once again that traditional country music has a place in key and unlock your door for you.” player but, as usual, it’s her lyrics that really contemporary music. More twang than Rheaume’s style is reminiscent of the shine. Never shying away from quirky top- torch, this album shines with the efforts of crop of non-traditional country-folk artists ics, Reid gives being gender queer its due some of Canada’s best country players, in- who made inroads in the mid-’90s, such as on three of the album’s 12 tracks. cluding Jay Nowicki. Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter. “Captain Cupcake and the Cambie Hotel” Do your ears a favour and get your hands Her well-constructed songs, 11 of which are is a country toe-tapper about “a cross- on a copy of Lucky Tonight. featured on Light of Another Day, pulse with dressing, tug-boating, roughneck from memorable musical hooks and hummable Nanaimo” whose feminine wiles win him AMANDA RHEAUME choruses, making for a perfect soundtrack the heart of the female bartender at the LIGHT OF ANOTHER DAY for long drives outside the city limits. local watering hole. On “Closet Femme,” Independent However, the true depths of her abilities another twanger, Reid outs herself as some- REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO can be found in the inspirational “Push one who, after work, likes to go home and Light of Another Day is a very well pro- On,” an ode to Canadian soldiers who slip on women’s clothing—it’s a funny and duced country album that showcases fought in Afghanistan and must come hummable tune. Rounding out the trio of some pretty fancy guitar playing from home to live lives that have been changed tunes is “When I Was a Little Boy,” a tender Ottawa singer-songwriter Amanda forever. War trauma is a tough subject for ballad about the little boys that live inside a Rheaume. Her first full-length CD of any song, one that could come across as lot of girls. original material, Light of Another Day is contrived and clichéd; instead “Push On” While she can skilfully hammer together a paean to the often tedious lives of inde- reverberates with compassionate sincer- a ballad, Reid’s at her best when she’s being pendent artists, from bargain-basement ity. Masterful. joyously irreverent, as is the case with “My tours to the impact the lifestyle has on Baby’s In The Beer Tent Again” and the title relationships that fail to survive the com- KATE REID track, “Doing It For the Chicks.” She is hi- mitment of time and distance. DOING IT FOR THE CHICKS larious, whether detailing how a little liquid While failed love is a recurrent theme on Independent courage can turn an introverted girlfriend Light of Another Day, there is definitely an REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO on to a game of naked Twister or suggest- undercurrent of romantic hope. For exam- Lock up your daughters—lesbian folkie Kate ing her ulterior motives for performing as a ple, there’s “Open Door,” an upbeat number Reid is back with her third release, Doing singer-songwriter to a roomful of Christians. that finds Rheaume promising to “find my It For the Chicks. Reid is a decent guitar Great fun. 

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

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Feminist hero and activist Michele Landsberg looks back on her columns for the Toronto Star, documenting over 30 years of the women’s movement in Canada, and reflects on where we have been, where we are now, and where the passionate new generation of women’s rights activists will take us.

Available October 18th, 2011 – Person’s Day at your favourite bookstore and online

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40 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS arts culture WINTER READING

MISSED HER IVAN E. COYOTE Arsenal Pulp Press REVIEW BY JOY PARKS Do not attempt to read Ivan Coyote’s Missed Her while riding on public transportation. The loud outbursts of belly laughter and, seconds later, sobs and accompanying cheeks soaked with tears, indicate the kind of swings in emotion you don’t want ex- posed to strangers. Within this relatively thin volume, Coyote has once again managed to encapsulate all the big stuff: love (of various kinds), loss, death, desire, boots (yes, boots!), the butch bro-hood and family connections. It’s sneaky, powerful stuff. after a passionate courtship, she believes a caricature of a subaltern employing Missed Her is, like most of her previous she will be happy. She was raised to think Western-style feminism to attain liberation, short story collections, chockablock with for herself, she is well-educated and she’s and the manner of her revenge poses an Coyote’s encounters with the gay youth and sure of Haroon’s love and commitment. interesting question for the reader—does it the seniors she meets at readings and work- A woman’s chance at marital happiness, truly count as revenge when the principal shops and tales of her personal adventures however, is always a gamble in a patriarchal target has no recognition of the act? during visits home to Yellowknife, where her society, and Jhurmur learns she must be a Jhurmur is delighted to comprehensively butch demeanour is simply not an issue. bou (daughter-in-law) first and a wife second. betray her husband, who is oblivious of her There’s the lavish way she writes of Haroon was an ardent suitor who wooed actions and content with his life. Perhaps femmes in “Hats Off,” the wonderfully funny her patiently, but post-marriage he regards Nasrin is just being pragmatic here (if and useful “Uncle Ivan’s Lonely Hearts Club her with suspicion for having succumbed Jhurmur’s secret were discovered, the social Plan” (both versions!) and the crashing of consequences would be devastating). Secret stereotypes in “Some of My Best Friends to his courtship. He isolates her from her rebellions must suffice until the revolution are Rednecks.” But the best are the tender friends and family, refuses to let her go out and funny tales Coyote tells of her family. to work and tells her to concentrate on the arrives. That we’re left feeling discomfited is She portrays her relatives as good people— household instead. Financially dependent testament to Nasrin’s refusal to look for easy open-minded but slightly rough around the on Haroon and fearful of the consequences answers to deep-rooted issues. edges—who raised her right. This may of divorce, Jhurmur acquiesces to Haroon’s explain the homey wisdom apparent in so emotional abuse. But when Haroon denies VARIOUS POSITIONS MARTHA SCHABAS many of her stories and why she has the he’s fathered her baby and insists she have Doubleday Canada confidence to tell them well. an abortion, Jhurmur is roused out of her In a little more than a decade, that in- complaisance and plots her revenge. REVIEW BY KERRY RYAN cludes five collections of short stories (plus As with all of Taslima Nasrin’s books, Of the worlds Martha Schabas explores longer fiction and a co-edit of a recent popu- Revenge is primarily an indictment of the in her debut novel, Various Positions, I’m lar anthology, Persistence: All Ways Butch patriarchal mores of the author’s native not sure which is more volatile, stressful and Femme), Coyote has revitalized the short Bangladesh. Education has often been seen or heartbreaking: the prestigious ballet narrative. The brevity of the form depends on as the answer to such societal ills, but in academy, where perfection is a crushing a precision of language, a depth of craft hid- this novel Nasrin acknowledges a very ba- prerequisite, or the mind of a 14-year-old den by the author’s ah-shucks attitude. But sic truth: Education isn’t a path to women’s girl, whose obsession with meeting those make no mistake: This is not talk committed empowerment unless it provides a chance twisted ideals ultimately unravels her life. to a page. This is true storytelling, fictions at economic independence. In Haroon’s The ballet school is itself a character pulled from life, the elevation of everyday home, Jhurmur’s degree merely gives her in the story, and Schabas’s description is encounters to art. It’s something Coyote gets “a rather irrelevant superiority” over the meticulous, mirroring the intricacy, formality better at with each new collection. household’s other daughter-in-law, a girl and tradition of the discipline. As the novel who finished secondary school. But when opens, our narrator, Georgia, prepares for REVENGE Jhumur finally gets a job, she views it as a the audition that will be her ticket out of pub- TASLIMA NASRIN sign that she’s finished with a life of submis- lic school, away from the boys who ridicule The Feminist Press sion and that her husband knows she “will her small breasts and the cliquey girls who REVIEW BY NIRANJANA IYER no longer stand for his cruelty.” don’t understand her passion for dance. When Jhurmur, a spirited Bangladeshi Jhurmur is a complex character, with Georgia is an astute and articulate observ- young woman, weds her boyfriend Haroon enough moral ambiguity to rise above er, a trait that might not ring true in a young

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 41 arts culture WINTER READING

helps Irma and her sisters start a new life. And, above all, Aggie is the driving force behind many of Irma’s positive actions. Sometimes antagonistic, often affectionate and always very funny, their very genuine bond is the most engaging and uplifting part of the novel.

MISSING MATISSE JAN REHNER Inanna Publications REVIEW BY MAYA KHANKHOJE Jan Rehner is a feminist, lecturer, poet and novelist who has won awards for excellence in teaching as well as for two previous novels. It will not be a surprise if she wins a third award for Missing Matisse. teen, except that ballet has attuned her to Kindness. Irma Voth is a darker novel, set in This novel is set in contemporary times nuance. She’s fixated on both her own body Chihuahua, Mexico, where Irma and her fam- with incursions into World War II. It is locat- and the variations among her peers, though ily have relocated from Canada. The reasons ed in both Canada and France, and the main whether that’s her age or a side effect of her for the move are mysterious and, conse- characters are feisty and interesting wom- surroundings is unclear. Her constant use of quently, the characters are a little lost, unsure en. And then there is Matisse, of course, the words “boobs” and “bum” is a reminder of their role in this unfamiliar land. and his paintings. The author seamlessly that she’s caught between childhood and the Everything changes when a film crew jumps from one scenario to another without sexualized domain of teens. rolls into town. The plan is to make a movie disconcerting the reader. In fact, each story While Georgia spends her days in the about Mennonites, but the community informs the others, as they in turn make one exacting environment of the ballet studio, (and the weather) is less than cooperative. another move forward. her parents’ marriage is eroding, and with Trilingual Irma is hired as a translator and The plot hinges on a missing Matisse it, her mother’s mental health. As one of companion for Marijke, the film’s female painting, one that may or may not have her friends becomes consumed by an eat- lead. As Irma is drawn into the world of the survived the vagaries of the World War II. ing disorder, Georgia begins to take control filmmakers, her little sister, Aggie, takes a Several parties are interested in having over her own life and body in an equally decisive step away from hers, leaving their it for sentimental or monetary purposes. destructive way. troubled family home forever. Eventually, Chloe, our Canadian modern-day heroine Although she rejects the outward dis- the sisters flee to a life of new possibilities who happens to be an artist, wants to plays of sexuality among her classmates as in Mexico City. find it because she has in her possession sullying the purity of their art form, Georgia Irma Voth is well-written, but the slow a sketch of it with a possible family con- becomes convinced that a relationship is pace of the first 150 or so pages makes nection. In her search, she puts herself in blossoming between her and her handsome, that section challenging to read. The harm’s way, falls in love and finds out the much-whispered-about dance instructor. movie-making part of the story feels a little truth, though it is not necessarily what she Schabas’s writing is at its electric height as disjointed, although this is likely a fair rep- expected to hear. Georgia descends the rabbit hole that is a resentation of an actual experience (and Lydia, muse and assistant to Matisse, is teenage girl’s mind, her behaviour becoming Toews would know—she appeared in the both a subject and the narrator of the World increasingly risky and disturbing. Mexican film Luz Silenciosa in 2007). But it War II part of the story. And here is where With Various Positions, Schabas provides is when Irma and Aggie make their great fiction intertwines with truth, because Lydia an ideal backdrop against which to study escape to Mexico City that the narrative Delectorskaya was one of the few models the sexualization of girls, and a protagonist soars. Suddenly, the characters are mov- Matisse named in his work. who is both wise beyond her years and ing quickly and urgently; their new sights Missing Matisse is a fast-paced novel that exasperatingly naive. It’s an explosive, com- and sounds are colourful and stimulating. moves relentlessly towards its striking reso- pelling page-turner, too. It’s not easy to put the feeling of first-time lution. Yet it meanders enough to allow the liberation into words, but Toews succeeds, reader to live vicariously in Matisse’s world IRMA VOTH painting the contrasts between the sisters’ and in World War II France. The characters MIRIAM TOEWS current and former lives as significant but are very believable, with human flaws that Knopf Canada not simplistic. would have pleased a Fauvist like Matisse. REVIEW BY ALICE LAWLOR Throughout the novel, it’s the female re- The sense of loss I felt when I put the In her fifth novel, Miriam Toews returns to the lationships that move the plot forward. Irma book down was compensated by the sense theme of Mennonite communities, like the and Marijke form a bond that helps them of anticipation I felt at the urge to revisit one she so vividly evoked in A Complicated through the experience of filming. Noehmi Matisse’s art.

42 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS arts culture WINTER READING

THE KID SAPPHIRE Penguin REVIEW BY EVELYN C. WHITE Fifteen years after the release of her debut novel Push (later adapted as the Oscar- winning film Precious), Sapphire has delivered a harrowing narrative about a black youth. The child is Abdul Jones, the incest- conceived son of the protagonist of Push. “Abdul my daddy’s baby too,” Claireece “Precious” Jones declares in the 1996 novel. “I don’t feel shamed—Carl Kenwood Jones freak NOT me!” In The Kid we meet Abdul, age nine, at the funeral of his mother, who has died THE ODIOUS CHILD AND development when it should have smiled. from AIDS. Bereft and bewildered, he OTHER STORIES The mother fears that the shaking harmed ponders his “good” shoes while gazing CAROLYN BLACK or stunted the baby’s development and at Precious in her casket: “I got these Nightwood Editions becomes obsessed with making the baby on today cause she’s dead. Not because smile or laugh. I’m going anywhere. Who gonna buy me REVIEW BY SYLVIA SANTIAGO Carolyn Black writes about her charac- shoes now?” Many of the characters in The Odious Child ters and their circumstances with subtle Readers track Abdul’s horrific jour- yearn to make a connection: women with humour and insight. Her skilful observations ney as he bounces from foster care, to a men, mothers with children and, in one of how people deal (or don’t deal) with the pedophile-plagued Catholic orphanage, to an case, a head with a body. uncertainty and impermanency of life are by experimental dance company where he la- In “At World’s End, Falling Off,” a museum turns amusing and touching. bours to transform his nightmarish existence employee ventures into online dating. As the into meaningful art. “If I hadda been left woman studies the profiles on the website, alone, I woulda been a good kid,” the author she realizes that “the men looked like arti- KING KONG THEORY VIRGINIE DESPENTES (TRANSLATED BY writes. “Maybe I would already be a dancer facts on display. This was comforting.” She selects a man for his attractiveness and the STÉPHANIE BENSON) like that girl in the paper … thirteen!” The Feminist Press Sadly, Abdul is betrayed at every turn. irony is not lost on her: “ I had never dated Perpetually violated, he becomes a con- a beautiful man, but I had never used my REVIEW BY DEANNA RADFORD fused, mistrusting and merciless young credit card to meet one either.” When they In King Kong Theory, Virginie Despentes man. Here, Sapphire details Abdul’s meet, the woman goes to great lengths to begins, with crystalline prose, to compose encounter with a man who has solicited ensure the date is a success. Their encoun- a manifesto. In 136 pages, the French au- him for sex. “I hit him in the face with my ter takes unexpected turns, and the truth of thor continues as she builds a pithy book, a fist, hard, all my weight behind it. I hit him the woman’s home life is revealed. harrowing book, a book replete with politi- again and again, then snatch him up off “Serial Love,” which was featured in The cal urgency. the bed and throw him on the floor. He’s Journey Prize Stories 22, takes place at a Susie Bright compares her to Valerie groaning, his face is covered with blood. speed-dating event. The woman, Number Solanis, Inga Muscio and Sylvia Plath. I I kick him in the stomach. Wish I had 14, finds herself drawn to Number 29, a would hasten to add Germaine Greer and boots on.” criminologist whose conversation revolves Jean Genet, as Despentes celebrates: Riddled with profanity, inhumanity and around serial killers. Despite this attrac- “The old hags, the dykes, the frigid, the degrading (if not depraved) sexual liaisons, tion, Number 14 accepts a ride home from unfucked, the unfuckables, the neurotics, The Kid casts a blistering light on society’s Number 29 when the event is over. Her the psychos, for all those girls who didn’t failure to protect the most vulnerable. In the rationale: “in her thirties, she rarely meets get a look in the universal market of the chilling novel, push has definitely come to single men so has thrown herself at the consumable chick.” Despentes voices that shove. In that regard, Sapphire’s bold but kindness of strangers, who could, for all she she is “more desiring than desirable” and too often mind-numbing offering serves as a knows, turn out to be serial killers.” writes that, “As a girl, I am more King Kong cautionary tale. In “Baby Mouth,” a woman is guilt-ridden than Kate Moss.” Consider a closing riff: “Why was their about shaking her baby in a moment of With the strength of these contrasts, nasty asses out crawling in the gutter trying anger. Whenever she looks at the child, the author dismantles myths about rape, to cream kids’ asses for ten dollars or a ham- “the unsmiling face of her baby gives a sign pornography and prostitution and illustrates burger?” Abdul wonders. “That’s what one that she is flunking as a mother.” The baby their intrinsic relationship to capitalism. guy asked me: ‘How about a Whopper?’” is nearly a year old, well past the stage of Her analysis is necessarily challenging and

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 43 arts culture WINTER READING when she writes, “Rape doesn’t disturb the IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME surprise of late-found love. peace, it’s already part and parcel of the EDITED BY EMILY W. UPHAM AND The most useful pieces, and there are city,” her case is a wake-up call. LINDA GRAVENSON several among the 34, show self-awareness It is underlined when she reminds us Simon & Shuster without self-involvement, thereby offering of slavery’s lineage and reverberations REVIEW BY AMANDA LEROUGETEL insight of value to others. Jane O’Reilly, a through time, as discussed by activist and Our age is a particular point in time, which founding editor of Ms. Magazine, writes of author Angela Davis. Despentes writes that we celebrate more or less depending on the “skein of life”–a lovely image for life “Rape is civil war” and “Rape is a well- how our aging is going. But, like it or not, that can be neat and ordered, yet come defined political strategy: the bare bones prepared or not, we will age—some of us unwound at the pull of a thread. of capitalism, it is the crude and blunt more gently than others. Actively thinking Helena Maria Viramontes writes mov- representation of the exercise of power. It about aging and how we react and respond ingly of the impact of the expected death of designates a ruler....” to it is the theme of In the Fullness of Time, her mother and the unexpected, shocking In the chapter “King Kong Girl,” a collection of writings by women aged 55 deaths of her sister and her brother. She Despentes outlines her relationship to punk to 101. describes her journey as “an apprenticeship rock as catalyst for her independence. While the contributors, mostly of into [her] own mortality.” Several pieces ad- In the final chapter, “Bye, Girls,” Caucasian descent, are not representa- dress looks and beauty and how these fade Despentes marks feminism as a revolu- tive of the North American demographic, over time–hardly the topic of feminist rev- tion with vision; it is alive and never more their pieces do address a wide range of elation. Indeed, one piece is problematically necessary than it is now. The precision of themes, including the fear of death; the life- titled, “Even Smart Women Hate Losing her arguments is breathtaking and King long impact of babies born, dead or lost to Their Youthful Looks.” However, Katherine Kong Theory is a compelling read. While adoption; the ongoing or lingering issues Weissman counters this by proposing that Despentes carefully maps her influences of relationships with mothers and fathers; we should strive to “grow old like trees, and simultaneously embodies them, King issues of faith and life after death; the im- without shame or loathing.” Kong Theory is galvanizing on its own and is portance of resilience in the face of life’s I recommend this anthology for its impor- essential reading. challenges; the pleasure of solitude; and the tant essential message: Our old(er) age may

joining forces online! blog We’re excited to be able to keep readers abreast of the latest feminist news and commentary in between quarterly issues of the magazine. The Ms. Blog showcases the sharp writing and informed opinions of a community of feminist bloggers from around the nation and the globe. So please become part of this exciting new community—a place where feminism takes center stage. www.msmagazine.com/blog

44 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS arts culture WINTER READING not include good health or good fortune, but if we can muster resilience, we may survive its indignities.

THE LOVE QUEEN OF MALABAR Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das MERRILY WEISBORD McGill-Queen’s University Press REVIEW BY KRIS ROTHSTEIN In 1995, Canadian writer Merrily Weisbord was looking for a project to follow her memoir about sexuality and aging. She dis- covered Kamala Das, a poet from the south Indian province of Kerala, an infamous, divisive icon in her homeland and now in her 60s. Weisbord suggested a meeting, conversion to Islam. Ultimately this is a “study of living.” While supported by re- proposing that the women write about each story about freedom, love and female iden- search and historical context, she sought other. Against the odds, the women became tity, and the details of Kamala’s life are less fresh voices. “I interviewed hundreds of close friends, visiting in India and Canada important than the stories she tells. women via email and in person, and then over ten years. I convened a council of experts—artists, This book is a dramatic foray into the topic BLUEBIRD mothers, service workers, scholars.” of subjectivity, with a vibrant, charismatic Women and the New Psychology No mind-numbing psychological self-as- woman at its centre—an unreliable subject of Happiness sessment tools here. Gore prods her subjects extraordinaire. Early on, Weisbord sees her ARIEL GORE with piercing questions. “How heavily do you project as a traditional biography and begins Farrar, Strauss, Giroux weigh your own happiness when making life gathering secondary sources, comparing decisions?” “What is your fondest memory?” stories and checking dates. Kamala quickly REVIEW BY CONNIE JESKE CRANE “Do you think you’re happier or less happy dissuades her, suggesting that dry research For any woman ever stung by admonish- than your mother was at your age?” is not the way to find truth. But when Kamala ments to “Smile!” Bluebird offers welcome Her subjects, and Gore herself, share starts craving an admiring biography, illumination. generously. As you might expect, the Weisbord is left wondering which truths are In the U.S., the insistence on cheer can conclusions are far more complex and important for an honest book. be traced back more than a century. But beautiful than a scale of one to 10 can Weisbord’s prose is clear and her insis- author Ariel Gore was initially attracted by reveal. Ultimately, Gore prefers Canadian tence on emotional honesty is commendable the late-1990s “positive psychology” move- psychologist Paul T.P. Wong’s call to move and unusual, even in this confessional era. ment, with its focus away from “neurosis Kamala insists that she wants to bare all, not and pathology and toward resilience and beyond “the comfortable confines of just as a poet, but as a woman and a cultural well-being.” Slowly, though, as she explored American positive psychology” and toward figure. But her stories change from day to the work of proponents like psychologist a more mature “psychology focusing on day—or perhaps Western narratives are Martin Seligman, Gore saw a Twilight Zone contentment, humility, meaning, and accep- insufficient to tell the truths of her story. kind of weird. “Everyone in this strange tance—even in the midst of suffering.” Kamala was married at 15 to an older and smiley land, it seemed, was a guy,” she As one subject says, “Life sucks for a lot man who was a homosexual. She endured writes, adding that “an intriguing number of of people on Earth. The whole make-your- painful, unwanted sex during marriage but the movement’s critics were female.” own-happiness ideal is a little sick when remained devoted to her husband. She wrote Gore resolved to remain open-minded. “I you consider that.” love poetry about other men but claims not to didn’t need to live in some feminist ghetto, have consummated affairs with any of them. after all.” Yet, after extensive research, she INSIDE THE MONEY MACHINE Weisbord, (who grew up in Canada during the eventually came to criticize a “psychologi- MINNIE BRUCE PRATT Carolina Wren Press sexual revolution), finds it hard to reconcile cal field that had largely disregarded the these stories with her own understanding of female experience.” Gore notes that “the REVIEW BY JOY PARKS physical desire and female freedom. majority of the commonly cited studies rely In 1981, Minnie Bruce Pratt, then a found- While the first half of the book provides on male subjects” and that, historically, ing member of the feminist literary journal insight into women’s lives and asks and women have been patronized, handed Feminary, published her first poetry collec- answers many questions about culture and mood-altering drugs or cruel blame more tion, The Sound of One Fork. This slender subjectivity, the later chapters lose focus often than healing (psychiatrists tagged her chapbook introduced readers to a clear and as Weisbord becomes caught up in the grandmother for her son’s schizophrenia). honest voice that relied on highly readable drama of Kamala’s life and her shocking Gore then boldly convened her own but deeply moving language to explore the

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 45 arts culture WINTER READING experience of otherness—spe- the book is clear: Feminist cifically, the experience of being classrooms, communities and southern, lesbian and female. organizations need to be safer, Thirty years and several vol- less oppressive spaces in which umes of poetry later, with Inside more voices, more experiences the Money Machine, Pratt is and more issues are respected still dealing with issues of other- and reflected in the feminist ness, this time with being on the movement. economic periphery. But today, being out of work, losing one’s THE HUNGRY MIRROR home and fearing the future has LISA DE NIKOLITS crept beyond the poor and the Inanna Publications working class. She tells us it’s REVIEW BY ANJANA getting harder to be mainstream BALAKRISHNAN in America. Lisa de Nikolits’ The Hungry This collection is so much a Mirror is a first-person narra- part of its time; the events that shape these without discounting the value of changing tive about the daily stress of being bulimic. poems could have been ripped from today’s the system from within. Creeping into every inch of her life—be it newspapers. Too, Pratt’s voice has grown Jessica Yee writes in her introduction: her perfect, convenient, loveless marriage, even more self-assured; she speaks straight “It is not a hate-on of academia. It is not her friends (or the lack thereof), jobs that to the matter at hand. In “All That Work No a hate-on of feminism. In fact this book is frequently change, or her struggle to live the One Knows,” she writes: what I would call ‘truth-telling:’ truth-telling lie of having the perfect life—these pages We’re not machines, you know. There’s about some uncomfortable truths.” flesh out the protagonist’s constant dread only so much we can take, Yee presents pieces from contributors of of food. always more than we can, until we can’t. different ages, genders and sexual identities The unnamed protagonist, accentuat- Today I hold the weight who come from many communities across ing her fight for that elusive thin identity, is low in my belly and back, guts coiled tight North America. They engage with each clean in her denial of her condition when from work at my desk. other in refreshingly direct dialogue about we first meet her. But we are soon gurgling But there’s hope here, too, that people are topics that tend to evoke discomfort, such as around in the regurgitated contents of her strong and resourceful, that we are more than sex work, colonialism, racism and poverty. life—be it her diet-obsessed parents or the the work we do, that we owe it to each other Contributors had free reign to include picture-perfect world of fashion magazines, to stay compassionate, to dream. In “Waking poetry, drawing or photography, or to use where she works as an art director. to Work,” Pratt is clear on a remedy: conversational round table formats for writ- The refuge she finds in self-help books, the How do we go on? Longing for something ten submissions. The loose organization of reassurance that mythology provides and the bigger than us. the book may disorient some readers, but I sanctuary of her office computer all turn out But not this now, not this buying and sell- found it enjoyable to open the book to any to be temporary. Hiding behind loose clothes, ing. If we could each page and start reading. she is “Miss Joie de Vivre” to the world, but make what we can, take what we need, In Theresa (TJ) Lightfoot’s contribution, to herself at one point she is “an elephant. An and that be enough— she writes about how issues affecting elephant who is never allowed to eat again.” There’s greatness here. Like Allen Native women are sometimes treated as The often two-, three- and four-paged Ginsberg’s Howl or Cor Sandburg’s Chicago “separate, or pushed under the umbrella of chapters build, for the reader, the panic of poems, Minnie Bruce Pratt has captured a ‘Native’ issues, not something that feminism someone who lives a life of planning and time and place, setting before us stories of would be concerned about.” counting calories to the point of starving the losses and triumphs of the victims/survi- Krysta Williams and Ashling Ligate’s co- herself ahead of letting herself eat a meal in vors of this economic war and questioning written piece presents thoughtful tips to a restaurant. how we move on from here. translate theory into lived experiences, to The event that ties up the loose ends engage in peer-to-peer education and to for our protagonist is a cathartic “two-day FEMINISM FOR REAL become better feminist allies. Cassandra course on body-image, an expressive art Deconstructing the Academic Polyzou reflects on the shame she felt as a workshop” her sister Madison gifts her. Industrial Complex of Feminism feminist with an eating disorder and calls for Redemption for this high-emotional-quotient EDITED BY JESSICA YEE a “kinder feminism. One that considers each novel comes in the form of the last chapter, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives individual as unique, flawed and beautiful, titled “My happy-ever-after.” REVIEW BY JOANNA CHIU and takes a step out of the classroom and This eating disorder is essentially about Burned-out women’s studies students may non-profit organization and into every per- binging and purging. How does one write an gravitate toward this book, but Feminism For son’s life.” entire novel about it and treat it with sensi- Real taps into the frustrations of challeng- The personal stories are as absorbing as tivity, while ensuring interest and integrity? I ing the status quo of feminism in academia they are diverse, but the message throughout would say like The Hungry Mirror does. 

46 WINTER 2012 HERIZONS arts culture FILM

No Wave filmmakers Scott B. and Beth B., artist Diego Cortez, Lydia Lunch, Johnny O’Kane, Bill Rice and Adele Bertei of the Contortions. (Photo: Marcia Resnick, Blank City.)

BLANK CITY nor access to equipment, or lack of talent, innocent with the provocateur, making Directed by Celine Danhier experience or training could stop them. way eventually for Madonna and Catherine REVIEW BY MAUREEN MEDVED Those who wanted to, made films, and did Breillat and all their musical and cinematic Long ago, before MTV, before the World so unmotivated by the promise of accolades. children. Names recognizable to the cine- Wide Web, before the proliferation of zillion- The object wasn’t a million hits on YouTube, phile include Beth B., Lizzie Borden, Bette dollar condos, New York City was home to a million-dollar production deal or even a Gordon, Lydia Lunch, Deborah Harry, Steve fledgling artists. They lived cheap and sur- million dollars. The object was to make art. Buscemi, John Lurie and Vincent Gallo. vived just enough to make art. Fame was irrelevant. People did what they Danhier captures her subjects, with In her film Blank City, Celine Danhier had to do, often taking enormous risks. Some abundant passion and research, through documents a time in the East Village and of these films have also become important collage-style interviews and archival foot- Lower East Side New York during the late works (Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens and age. Like punk itself, there is no glorification ’70s and early ’80s when artists gathered Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise are of this period, no stars and no pretense. like cowboys in the dirty Wild West, found two examples) in the cinematic canon. If there is a star, it’s DIY. Anyone who cameras, and shot their way into notoriety. During these years, women artists made wanted it had a shot. Resisting the commer- In the midst of the decay and the danger, their films with as much drive as their cialization of culture, Hollywood and the art artists lived, influenced each other and took male counterparts. Just as these artists scene, this concept provided a movement risks. Danhier captures the vigour, the en- challenged, and often smashed, traditional that felt new, audacious, guerrilla. ergy of that lost time. forms, so they did with content and con- Danhier explores a short, vital time in Blank City, its title an homage to a Richard text. Both men and women in this period cultural history, a time when those who Hell song, documents the underground film- pushed the boundaries of the feminine, discovered this art felt as much like explor- makers of that downtown scene. As with exploring, transgressing, even shatter- ers into new territory as those who made punk rock, which happened simultaneously ing classical feminist politics as well as it. As this movie documents, the essence and has been extensively documented, traditional and non-traditional identities of this era—for the spectators as much as these directors and actors lived by a do-it- by crossing the androgynous with the for those creating the spectacle—is that it yourself philosophy: Neither a lack of money, waifish, the slutty with the virginal, the seemed to be a good time. 

HERIZONS WINTER 2012 47 On the Edge BY LYN COCKBURN

ETHICS CLAIM ON SLIPPERY SLOPE

Kathryn Marshall, spokesperson for the oilsands lobby group So, let us take a closer look at the big three: Ethical Fisticuffs Ethical Oil, is no doubt pissed at U.S. President Barack Obama’s in Hockey, Ethical Poverty and Ethical Sexism. announcement that he’s putting off a decision on the proposed Ethical Fisticuffs in Hockey is a no-brainer, a mark of Keystone XL pipeline project for 18 months. The pipeline Canadianness right up there with the maple leaf and being promises Canadian oilsands bitumen to Texas refi neries. polite. Of course, being polite does not apply when one is in Ethical Oil has put millions of dollars into lobbying and the NHL. Note that underprivileged countries such as Saudi marketing tar sands oil as a squeaky-clean source of oil. “It Arabia do not encourage anyone, especially women, to play clearly didn’t work,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow at the hockey. Worse, I hear they don’t have much ice. That sounds New York think-tank Council of Foreign Relations. He pointed the fi nal buzzer to that argument. out that Ethical Oil’s campaign mostly appealed to those who Ethical Poverty is certainly something Canada can be proud already agreed with it. of. Take Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside as an example. That assessment is, I think, a trifl e harsh. Marshall did her Known as the poorest postal code in Canada, its streets best. She announced on the Huffi ngton Post that Ethical Oil house large numbers of those who suffer from mental illness, is way ahead of women’s rights organizations in Canada when work in the sex trade, have drug addictions or are homeless. it “stands up for the rights of oppressed women in confl ict oil It is the concept of Ethical Poverty that successfully keeps regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.” all these people in one place where they can be fed in soup However, Marshall’s outfi t, the brainchild of conservative kitchens and kept out of areas inhabited by their betters. It Ezra Levant that was founded by Alykhan Velshi, a former is a concept that has saved all levels of government—mu- aide to federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, is a trifl e nicipal, provincial and federal—countless money over the narrow and obviously needs to appeal to a broader audience. years by effectively keeping them occupied arguing about In fact, some unthinking (not to mention childish) dissenters whether or not it would be a good idea to provide affordable have suggested it’s not enough to charge: “Our oil is better housing, good medical assistance and accessible substance than your oil because we let women drive and you don’t, so abuse programs. nyah, nyah, nyah.” Ethical Sexism is exemplifi ed by the recent sexual harass- Yet it’s obviously not suffi ciently inclusive to simply talk ment scandal in the RCMP, which began when Corporal about oil in terms of ethicality since the windmill, solar and Catherine Galliford publicly alleged that she experienced years natural gas people are sure to nod off after the fi rst sentence. of sexual misconduct. Since then, several other women have And those people who inexplicably insist on paying more at- come forward. Nonetheless, it is but rumour that the RCMP tention to social issues than to business will refuse to relate. has changed its mantra from “We always get our man” to “We Then there has to be something for those who follow the Don often get the woman, then promote the man who harassed Cherry Just-Say-No-to-Pinko-Sissies approach to life. her.” Stack that up against the fact that there are no women in In broadening the appeal of Ethical Oil, Marshall would any Saudi Arabian police force for the male offi cers to harass. do well to start up Ethical Fisticuffs in Hockey and, after that In other words, Canada’s Ethical Sexism is far superior to the catches on, she may want to throw in a couple more tidbits to sexism in places such as Saudi Arabia where women have to the business community, such as Ethical Salmon Farming and stay at home to be harassed. Ethical Asbestos. Also, the lobbyist needs to offer something All of these concepts are sure to broaden the appeal of for intellectuals—Ethical Poverty would be a good title. As Ethical Oil. In fact, I believe Marshall and the other people a grand fi nale, she could go for a Huffi ngton Post piece titled behind Ethical Oil have already put them in play. After all, “Ethical Sexism” to draw in women who, for some reason, it is the only possible explanation for the fact that Obama is didn’t get the point of her fi rst piece. rethinking the Keystone pipeline project. 

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