If this cartoon were published, say, 2 weeks before the election, it would have been debated as a tool of racist, sexist propaganda and yet another blemish on corporate media. Her support would likely have grown after such a brutally immature attack.
But because politics is a dirty, disgusting, sociopathic game, it was published the day before the Ontario municipal election.
Read what Olivia Chow thinks of it below:
Chow told CP24 she thinks the cartoon is “disgusting.”
“Because I am Chinese-Canadian, I must be a communist and have slanted eyes and glasses … and since I am a woman, I must be inferior and therefore not good enough for the job of the mayor so I must rely on my deceased husband so it both racist and sexist,” she said.
Line them up here. In this one section of universal childcare analysis by one of the smartest people in the country, Michal Rozworski, we see a number of significant policy issues addressed:
affordable childcare.
universality.
feminism.
including mothers in the workforce more effectively.
a better shot a living wage for childcare workers.
national standards.
standardized curricula and best practices.
economies of scale [for those obsessed with the business plan]
Ultimately, a winning paragraph in a winning analytical piece
While caring for children is an essential task, it is also an unequally distributed chore according to gender and made difficult by unequal material circumstances. A universal system of childcare would at least give more mothers more choice about how to use their time and facilitate their participation in the workforce if they choose. In addition, and especially if it were publicly delivered, it could improve working conditions for childcare workers, standardize curricula and levels of care and increase efficiency via economies of scale.
…And after reading that, do you have an urge to say, “yeah, but”
– she’s young
– she’s a woman
– she’s uneducated
– whatever other condescending, dismissive thing you can imagine?
As a post-partisan eco-socialist, I affirm her words.
And if you follow the link below, you’ll see that The Nation Magazine uses the socialism quote to promote her picture, but does not link directly to their story on her, and the story doesn’t include the word “socialism.” Corporate media, for the fail, again!
“I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation.”
–Malala Yousafzai, who just became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner in history.
Dick’s Sporting Goods, in the all-too testosterone world of sports, released a catalogue with virtually no women in it. Except for cheerleaders and a girl watching men play sports.
A 12-year-old calls them out on this because even 12-year-olds get equality.
Dick’s sent a FOAD brush off letter back [see below].
Here’s what Dick’s ought to do now.
Recognize that there is profound sexism in sports.
Recognize that they have been a part of that.
Seek out organizations that promote equality in sports.
Partner with them to promote equality.
Open up their catalogue and advertising process to expanded stakeholder input.
Help be part of the solution to sexism in athletics.
Revel in the earned media, because they’re already suffering in it, so they may as well learn from their sexism, solve their own internal problems and make the world a better place.
There. That wasn’t so hard!
A 12-year-old girl is winning support online after she questioned a sporting goods catalogue over its infrequent use of women in a recent publication.
McKenna Peterson lives in Phoenix but grew up in Regina. Her family moved to Arizona two years ago where McKenna is an avid basketball player.
She wrote to Dick’s Sporting Goods this week about their Basketball 2014 catalogue, questioning why so few women appeared on its pages.
“There are NO girls in the catalog,” she wrote, although she immediately corrected herself by noting there was one image of a woman — as an observer sitting in the stands at a men’s game.
“And there are some cheerleaders on some coupons,” she added.
Peterson’s letter went on to talk about the value in the equal portrayal of men and women in sport.
“It’s hard enough for girls to break through in this sport [basketball] as it is, without you guys excluding us from your catalog,” she wrote. “Girls buy stuff from your store.”
You participate in a sex crime if you search for or look at revenge porn.
It is really that simple.
A Richmond, B.C., woman hopes her story of having nude photos leaked online will foster laws to protect women against cyberbullying.
Anisa Salmi was working at her desk when she got the call from a friend: Did you see what was posted about you online?
When the 27-year-old typed her name into Google she saw intimate photos of her posted online on The Dirty, a U.S. website known to feature photos of men and women and comments about them.
“It was horrifying. I just felt like my life was over,” said Salmi. “I felt violated.”
…
She would have liked to pursue the matter in civil court, but the lawyers she spoke with told her it would cost up to $30,000.
Salmi says she’s gotten a lot of support from other women since she posted her open letter online.
“A lot of my friends came up to me and said they were put in the same position,” she said.
She says she identifies with the plight of actor Jennifer Lawrence who recently spoke out against the unauthorized online sharing of photos of her and of other celebrities that were stolen off servers, calling it a “sex crime.”
“As a woman I understand how vulnerable and how horrifying it feels to have your private life on display and for people to judge you and shame you for it,” Anisa said.
Photo credit Instagram: @the_noush. Permission to use granted.
By Emily Griffiths
The Transit Police got burned in the media recently, when rad feminist transit riders called them out publicly for their summer-line of sexual assault ads. These ads use language that shames the survivors of sexual assault, stating, “the real shame of sexual assault is that it goes unreported.” It turns out that the transit police were the ones doing something that “doesn’t feel right” and making riders “uncomfortable.”
The whole thing was a PR blunder for the transit cops, who realized it right away and are now busily placating the public, regrouping, and working toward Version 2.0. This time, they’ll be sure to “include representatives from women’s rights groups” so as to remain in public favour. Great! Problem solved, right?
Maybe. If the ignorant and hurtful language of the original ad was its only flaw, the only reason to be concerned, and if there wasn’t another, equally repulsive message lurking underneath, then, yes, the problem would be solved. Sadly, that’s not the case.
The sinister implications of this transit ad not only shame survivors of sexual assault, but they also work to bring us all deeper into the police-state that Canada is quickly becoming (and perhaps, for those who are marginalized, always has been). An important piece of information appears at the bottom of the ad, in the second biggest font, urging readers to TEXT 87.77.77.
I’m sorry, what? We’re texting the cops now?
Yeah, what’s wrong with that?
Well, don’t you think it’s a little weird, like, ratting on random people to the authorities? It’s a little sci-fi. …a little Soviet Russia…a little Nazi Germany…
You’re so negative! Besides, it’s to stop sexual assault! You don’t like sexual assault do you?
The theme of sexual assault serves as the catalyst for gaining public acceptance for the practice of text messaging the police, for promoting and normalizing a tattletale behaviour in the populace. It functions much the same was as the issue of child pornography functions online. Child Pornography serves as the excuse for police-state surveillance tactics in the digital realm. Everybody hates Child Pornography. Everybody hates Sexual Assault. These issues serve as PR strategies to introduce the public to a new tool for surveillance and to further limit our freedoms. The report-your-neighbour text-message campaign goes nicely with the transit police smart phone app, OnDuty, which enables users to report “crimes”, view “Crime Maps”, and check out who is “Most Wanted!” It also gives the transit cops opportunity to gain access to your call logs, photos, locations, and more.
shabadoo111
Can I report someone on transit for being drunk and loud?
TransitPoliceBC
You can definitely report those situations. It’s an offense in the criminal code … We are very accountable, and are legally required to act to protect the public and preserve the peace.
So, perhaps it’s not only crimes that are being reported. After all, both the text service and the OnDuty app are for “non-emergent” reports only. And what kind of sexual assault is “non-emergent”? Traditional 911 works just find in summoning urgent police presence, so why these new social tools? It seems like they exist for reporting suspicion, rather than dangerous ‘crimes.’ In this arrangement, every person with a smartphone is a potential cop, a potential punisher, and people learn to suspect each other.”
“See something. Say something,” the transit ad reads. This isn’t entirely a bad idea. But to whom do we “say something?” It’s assumed that the answer is the police. They will swoop in and save the day and no one has to feel guilty for staring passively at their phone while someone is being assaulted, In Real Life, right in front of them. It’s understandable that even bystanders feel unsafe in these situations and may not be able to intervene, but we do have a collective responsibility. We need to decide whether we want to create a community in which a bus full of people band together and say “No!” to abusive behaviour, or to create a ‘safe’ community in which people are picked off the bus, one by one, by big men with guns?
We know which world the police are envisioning. There seems to be a real emphasis on punishment over prevention, in the language used by transit police. The Transit Police ad tells riders that not reporting sexual assaults is the real shame, rather than the fact that these assaults occur in the first place.
Spokesperson, Anne Drennan is quoted in the Metro as having never intended to “lay blame on victims in any way, but rather to suggest that it’s a real shame that these people get away scott free when these incidences are not reported.” It sounds as if the goal is not to stop potential abusers, but to punish perpetrators. Rather than prevention, the ad itself, supported by Drennan’s comments to the media, implicitly promote eye-for-an-eye, revenge-style ‘justice’ which serves as reinforcement for role of police in our communities.
The language of the transit police also includes a heavy use of the word “victim”, to describe those folks who have experienced sexual assault, despite the fact that the chosen identifier for these folks is “Survivors.” A survivor is strong and empowered, while a victim is weak and in need of protection, presumably by the police.
It’s clear from their language that neither preventing assault, nor empowering women and the community, are top priorities of the transit police. Instead, they actively present the world as a scary place and the police as our only protectors. If we need the police, if they are keeping us safe, then we won’t have a problem with them invading every aspect of our public and private lives, cracking down on every transgression and injecting our community with suspicion and fear.
Emily Griffiths is a writer, performer, and child care worker, living on unceded Coast Salish Territories.
Amber Michelin-Jones, left, and Rebecca Lynn Kelly were dressed in tops that Menihek High School deemed inappropriate for class. Thirty students were sent home. (Chris Ensing/CBC)
Welcome to the cusp of spring-summer.
Now that the weather is turning, the slut shaming and attacks on women’s clothing choices will ramp up.
In Labrador, 28 girls were sent home from school because their clothing contravened the dress code. They also sent home two boys whose shirts bared their shoulders. 47% of those voting on the CBC story’s webpoll supported the school’s decision.
But Memorial University professor Patricia Dold share some inconvenient truth about this:
Male students and teachers they apparently were distracting should be the ones under the microscope. … Dold said that the school should have an open conversation with students about the issue.
An open conversation would be welcome, but in our society, we don’t have those open conversations. Instead…
Instead, we have slut shaming. “Society,” men and women alike, criticize women who dress like “sluts” [however people define that] and suggest that those who dress like this woman [above] are just asking to be raped. What happens to the slut shamers who disrespect women who dress like this, when this woman was raped while actually wearing sweat pants and a hoodie?
That kind of disconnect is inefficient to the slut shaming agenda. so they ignore it. It’s the substance of ignorance.
So beyond teens dressing for summer then getting punished for lude boys being distracted by them, and women being raped when they’re NOT actually weary the “slutty” clothes, women who do well in high school often don’t make as much money as white men who do worse in school.
And what do our politicians do about any of this?
About as much as all the high schools that are not having open dialogues about dress codes, gender respect and slut shaming.
Indeed, our equality-champion prime minister and his crew just sits around; here’s all they are able to vomit out:
Citing the facts that aboriginal women are four times more likely to be murdered than white women, and that nearly one quarter of aboriginal women are victims of domestic abuse, the department has begun to explore new policy options: options as diverse as sighing, shaking their heads, and muttering “it’s a damn shame”.
“Is there some sort of historical context to all this?” said Prime Minister Harper. “Because it almost seems as though the conditions for this crisis might have been brought about by institutional racism.”
It would be really great if an actual leader, any leader, would step up and convene these conversations.
And short of that [I’m not holding my breath], it’s up to us, “society,” to start walking the talk of building a less idiotic, offensive and dangerous world.
Chow told CP24 she thinks the cartoon is “disgusting.”
Instead, we have slut shaming. “Society,” men and women alike, criticize women who dress like “sluts” [however people define that] and suggest that 
