The Dominion - Sexuality

TRANSitioning Spaces

hillarybain — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:50:15 +0000

Organizations slowly becoming more trans inclusive

HALIFAX—In July, Halifax had its first ever Dyke and Trans March, celebrating the identities of queer women and trans- people and challenging continued oppressions, particularly gendered oppression.

A similar march occurred last year; first called a Dyke March, then a Dyke and Trans March, the name was finally changed back to a Dyke March a week before the event. The flip-flop in names points to a larger trend in Nova Scotia: many organizations are moving to become trans-inclusive, but are struggling to figure out what that means.

Rebecca Rose, one of the organizers of both the Dyke March and Dyke and Trans March describes how the march evolved to be more trans-inclusive. Last year’s march was originally, “for women-loving-women,” explains Rose,“[but]a lot of folks understandably had some concerns because that definition is quite narrow and doesn’t encompass a lot of people in our community.” Organizers changed the name to the Dyke and Trans March, but some members of the trans- community felt that the “T” was simply being tacked on without adequate representation from trans- people.

This year, more members from the trans- community helped organize the march and the process was longer—including five meetings to settle on a name—making the event more trans-inclusive.

“I think that the work that went into the dialogue and the discussions were well worth it,” says Rose. It is important, she explains, “[because] people are complex and issues dealing with identity are complex. These things can be messy and uncomfortable and can take a long time and should take a long time because if not, you’re probably not doing it right."

Being a trans-inclusive space requires more than just adding “trans-” to the name and assuming that everything will be fine, says Ellen Taylor, the New Campaigns Co-ordinator at the Dalhousie Women’s Centre. Trans-inclusivity requires training and centering your mission and services to meet the needs of a diverse community.

The Dalhousie Women’s Centre is undergoing the long and sometimes uncomfortable process of becoming a trans-inclusive space. Taylor notes that part of that process is recognizing who the centre has been excluding. “The Dalhousie Women’s Centre has been in the past primarily a women’s space, primarily a white space, probably a middle class space and starting to think about how those things emerge through the services we provide or the events we hold as the centre...that is sending a message that [the centre] is primarily a women’s space and then we are just allowing other genders to be here," she says.

So, what is trans-inclusivity? What does that look like? What does it mean in terms of institutional structures? These are questions the facilitating team for the Tatamagouche Social Justice Youth Camp (SJYC) are tackling this summer.

In the past, sleeping arrangements at the SJYC have been sex-segregated into male and female dorms. Sex-segregated dorms are problematic, says Andy, one of the co-ordinators of the camp, “because it puts people on the spot and requires people to ‘out’ themselves. It can be a really horrible experience.”

“This year we decided to do it differently,” they* continue, “and a big piece of that is around queer and trans- stuff, and trying to make the space a safer, more accessible space for queer and trans- people.”

The team has been given the go-ahead from the Tatamagouche Centre to implement non-gendered sleeping arrangements this year. Participants will be given the opportunity to self-identify their gender and to choose whom they want to room with. “It’s pioneering in non-gendered sleeping arrangements for Nova Scotia,” Andy says. “I think it’s something other organizations, groups, or people should be encouraged to adopt or use.”

This is a great opportunity for structural change on a community level, says Andy, which is something you don’t hear about very often.

"As a trans- person, as a queer person, it's really important to me personally to address those things on a grassroots level where I feel like it can actually make a difference," they said. "It’s a really political decision that SJYC has decided to do...I don’t know if we all realize that it’s a political thing.”

*This article uses the singular, gender-neutral pronoun “they”. This is used interchangeably with the pronoun “he” because not all identities can be easily expressed in a two-gender, two-pronoun binary system. Andy requested that both of these pronouns be used in the article.

Shay Enxuga organizes with queer and trans- communities in Halifax. He was one of the organizers for the Dyke and Trans March, sits on the board at the Dalhousie Women’s Centre, and is a facilitator with the Tatamagouche Social Justice Youth Camp.

This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Dyke and Trans March

Don't Rape, Part 3

Kaley — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:31:39 +0000

Believe me

Disclaimer: Some scenes in this story may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault. Names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of sexual assault survivors.

HALIFAX—After his first day of grade 12, Jason and his two buddies picked up a couple eight-packs from the cold beer store in his Nova Scotian hometown and drank them behind the hockey rink. Since junior high, Jason had averaged between a pint and a quart of hard liquor per day. When they left for a friend’s house, Jason trailed behind the rest of the guys. He had drunk more than usual. A Kids Help Phone poster grabbed his attention. Lately he had thought about calling the hotline. He took out his phone and dialed the 1-800 number.

“I need help,” he said when the woman answered. He began to sob and couldn’t stop. She asked if he was in danger. He said no; it had happened 10 years ago.

His friends saw his tears and asked what was wrong. They pushed him until he told his story out loud for the first time.

When Jason was eight, his parents paid a babysitter to take care of him over a period of a year and a half. The touching started with innocent games of tag, which turned into wrestling and eventually into groping, each time with less and less clothing, “encroaching on boundaries until they started to disappear.”

The babysitter—an older boy in high school—said no one would believe Jason if he told, and that his parents would be mad at him, so Jason stayed quiet.

“I shut down. I was like a shell and I kind of hung out inside that shell. I stopped using ‘feeling’ words. Anytime someone asked me what was going on I said ‘regular’ or ‘neutral’ or ‘average.’ I stopped being expressive at all.”

His parents took him to a therapist. There was a book in the therapist’s office about a kid who had a secret but couldn’t tell anyone.

“I was screaming inside myself that I recognized exactly what that was about.” But he couldn’t say it out loud.

When he was 13, Jason began drinking to deal with his trauma, which manifested into night terrors. Nearly every night for five years he was scared to fall asleep. Sometimes he woke up paralyzed, able to open his eyes but unable to move his body. Other times, as he drifted off, he hallucinated scenes of torture and death. Often he couldn’t wake up from vivid nightmares. To cope, he began taking shots of vodka each night before bed. Jason coaxed cab drivers to buy him liquor with the money he saved from his paper routes and computer cleaning business.

Jason, now 26, has been sober for two years. “I’m by no means past it, but it’s two years since it’s controlled everything I do. It was live or die because I ended up in hospital trying not to live anymore. It was either get on with living, or choose the other...” he says, trailing off.

His problem had peaked in his 20s when he downed a bottle of pills with a quart of vodka and called in sick to work. He vaguely remembers the police in his apartment. He woke up in hospital.

One in six boys and one in four girls are sexually assaulted before the age of 16 according to Statistics Canada.

Though males make up the smaller side of rape statistics for any demographic, Jackie Stevens of the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre says the root cause is still the power dynamic of one person exerting control over another.

“Predominantly males who are sexually abused are sexually abused by other males, and statistically people who are committing sexual violence mostly are men,” she says.

“Particularly if it’s a male assaulting another male, that is the ultimate way—how do you control another man? By reducing him to the equivalent of a woman, who is not your equal. How do you do that? Through sexual domination. The flip side, for women who are sexually abusing, [is that] they don’t have power or control, so how do you get power and control? By violently dominating someone else. I would see sexual violence as a tool for that power control.”

Anyone can be sexually assaulted and anyone can sexually assault, Stevens says. The epidemic surpasses all societal barriers. However, layers of oppression contribute to the initial problem, and make it harder for vulnerable people to get help.

When Jason told his mom he was sexually abused, she said it didn’t happen, that he made it up.

“As a symptom, you learn to manipulate and that involves a lot of lies and storytelling and that kind of stuff, which I used to do habitually,” Jason said. “So she wasn’t willing to go down that road at all.”

“That’s one of the most common things that we hear from people,” Stevens says. “That they’re not believed, or that they’re afraid they’re not going to be believed, or they’re going to be blamed in some way for it.”

She says because our society still subscribes to myths and stereotypes surrounding who gets sexually assaulted and why, it is easier for us to doubt a person who says they were raped. If someone has previously lied to their parents or friends, or if they are mentally ill, we are sometimes quicker to blame or disbelieve that person than to immediately accept that they were raped.

Jason stayed quiet for 10 years because society perceives sexual assault as “something different, and by calling attention to that, it makes you different.”

Even today, he doesn’t talk openly about it.

“You don’t want that to be the only label you have... By broadcasting that you just get terrified that it’s all people are going to see.”

At the time, Jason partially blamed himself. His babysitter told him he had wanted, and started, the abuse.

“Initially you get terrified that it was you who did something wrong, it was you who was in trouble, it was you who would be punished. There’s a panic that you’re not in control of your own body anyway. So losing that control to someone else gives you such a fear that it makes irrational thoughts rational. Terror supercedes what your rational course of actions would be.”

“For a lot of people there’s still that shame and fear attached to being sexually violated that would certainly keep them from wanting to come forward because they’re not sure how people will perceive them,” Stevens says.

The Avalon Centre says believing and supporting a friend or family member who tells you they were sexually abused are the most important things you can do.

A step-by-step website, advises the following actions if someone tells you he or she has been sexually abused:

Believe her (or him) without condition.

Speak to her (or him) without blame or judgment.

Do not judge her (or his) response to the assault.

Allow her (or him) to make the decision about what happens next.

Take care of yourself.

This story is Part 3 of a three-part series.
read Part 1
read Part 2.

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op.

Don't Rape, Part 2

Kaley — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 05:17:25 +0000

Why women don't report sexual assault

Disclaimer: Some scenes in this story may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault. Names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of sexual assault survivors.

“How does it feel to be a Monday?” he yelled across the street to a group of black people.

When Laura didn’t laugh, he turned to her and clarified: “You know, Monday—the worst day of the week.”

That was when Laura knew something was off about him.

“That’s not OK,” she said. “It’s not funny to be racist.”

He hastily apologized. She called him an asshole. Laura's roommate walked on ahead, furious.

He said he was nervous because he really liked her.

“Don’t say that shit. It’s not funny,” she said.

Laura met him in grade seven, through a close friend, at a party. They chatted over MSN on and off. In her second year at Dalhousie, he messaged her on Facebook. He was at Dal too! Did she want to meet for coffee? They met, once. She ran into him that night at the Alehouse. The place was packed with people she didn’t know. She was there with her female roommate. He bought drink after drink for Laura. He wanted to take her on a date sometime. She said, “We’ll see.” When the girls were drunk and it was time to go home, he offered to walk them. They gratefully said yes.

It was mild for mid-October. They walked up Sackville Street, took a right, and walked past the graveyard where Alexander Keith is buried. Laura’s roommate kept her distance. A few minutes later they came to her front door.

“Can I come inside for a minute?” he asked. “I just want to talk to you. I feel like shit about what happened.”

“Fine,” she said. “Fine.”

She let him in. Her roommate was already inside with her bedroom door locked. They walked to Laura’s room on the main floor and she went into the ensuite bathroom, brushed her teeth, took out her contacts and changed into sweatpants. When she opened the door, her room was dark.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m right here,” he said from the bed.

She sat on the bed. He was under the blankets.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m just being really comfortable.”

“This isn’t a sleepover party. You said you wanted to talk."

“Whatever. It’s cool. You know me.”

She had the spins so she lay down under the covers. He was naked.

“This isn’t cool,” she said. “I don’t really like this.”

He ripped off her sweatpants.

“This isn’t OK. I’m really pissed off at you. I don’t want to sleep with you. Stop. Don’t do that.”

She started to cry. He was taller and stronger than her. What was she supposed to do?

Laura woke up the next morning to a note on her desk. Her attacker had written: “Get Plan B. We didn’t use a condom."

According to a 2004 Juristat report, in 64 per cent of sexual assault cases the survivor knew his or her attacker.

Laura didn’t report her rape.

A few days later, when she couldn’t handle her feelings by herself anymore, she called her mom.

“I got sexually abused,” she said, sobbing, and told the whole story.

“Well you’re fucking stupid,” her mom said. “What do you expect, letting a boy into your house. What, do you think you’re a slut?”

“We often tend to look for, ‘What did you do?’ or, ‘What was it about you that caused [your rape]?’” says Jackie Stevens, co-ordinator of community education for the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre. “We still do that as a society. We tend to do that more than, ‘What causes this person to commit a sexual offence?’ or, ‘What’s wrong with that person?’ We still put the blame on the victim as to what caused the sexual assault."

Rather than report what happened, rather than deal with blame or disbelief from authorities, Laura wrote a poem called “Tattoo.”

...This violence you’re playing
Is far too intense
So in my defence I’m saying
Stop.
Because men like you have had me tattooed,
Stripped me nude on the first date;
You’d wait for my last sip of the grape to drain
Then rape.
Soon you’d be out on to my sisters;
Blaming our bushes for begging,
Claiming our cunts couldn’t come,
So you’d just keep on banging
‘Til we bled, soaked the bed,
And you’d leave us to rot...

“Ideally”—Stevens lets out a soft, skeptical "Heh"—“because we have a crime-and-punishment kind of culture, because we have a legal system, [rape is] supposed to go through the legal process, but in reality, sexual assault is one of the lowest reported crimes.”

A 2005 statistical profile of Nova Scotia by Juristat found that only eight per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police.

Over the last decade, acquittal rates for sexual assaults have risen in this province while remaining stable for other violent offences, according to a 2009 report by the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Over the same period, the proportion of prison sentences handed to adults convicted of sexual assault has significantly declined, again remaining stable for other violent offences.

“The high incidence of sexual assault in Nova Scotia, combined with a declining police and court response to sexual offences, leaves women in this province in a position of vulnerability,” according to the report.

“Even when someone has been convicted of a sexual crime, they might serve their time, whatever that is,” Stevens says. “But the impact on the victim is never going to change, is never going to go away. Regardless of what happens to the perpetrator, the trauma and the stigma attached to the person who has experienced victimization is never going to change—because of our perceptions.”

When a woman comes to her for help, Jane Doe* of the Dalhousie Women's Centre tells her not to report the rape.

“I say to women: ‘Don’t bother.’”

The local activist says the legal system is a bandage solution that doesn’t prevent sexual assault.

“I don’t have to get them to report. All I have to do is empower them, to let them know that they’re loved, to let them know that they did nothing wrong, that every anger, every hate, every feeling that they have is completely justifiable. If there’s any way that you want me to help you express those feelings, I’m here for you," she says.

She says creative expression, such as writing a letter to the newspaper, helps a woman grow past her negative experience; the court system does just the opposite.

“If a woman chooses to use the justice system to redress the crime that has befallen her, she had better be prepared to absolutely have no human dignity at all when it’s over. You better be prepared that everything you screwed, licked, ate, puked, shat, for the last 25 years, is now fair game.”

Many sexual assault cases rely on a man’s DNA evidence. If the victim cannot prove there wasn’t consent, or if the defence can establish reasonable doubt about lack of consent, that DNA evidence often won’t matter. All it proves is that they had sex.

Doe says the defence will often try to undermine a woman’s credibility to show she is making up the rape because then it is one person’s word against another’s.

“That’s a big barter: 'I will give you my human dignity in exchange for justice for this crime.' We don’t do that to other so-called victims. That’s why women don’t report it, because, ‘I can handle the rape; I can’t handle the loss of human dignity.’”

Women tell her all the time: “The worst thing that happened to me is not that I got raped.”

Laura’s poem didn’t help her get over her experience, but it did help empower her.

...But this time I’m on top
Tattooing you.
How does it feel
Being used just for the skin you’re stuck in?
Like my needle slowly stretching your outsides thin?  
When you’re red I’ll spread you out
So I can slowly
Fuck you instead.
But me, I won’t leave you chewing
Your swollen cheek, doing nothing,
Soul stolen and weak.
I would wait until morning and tell you
Why.

El Jones doesn’t censor herself. She speaks the raw truth regardless of criticism or praise, both of which she’s garnered as a black spoken word poet and professor at King’s College.

In her poem “If I Had a Penis,” Jones points to inequalities between the sexes, such as men earning 30 per cent more than women in the same jobs with the same skills. She says these inequalities are at the root of rape.

“If I had a penis, I’d be on the right side of rape statistics, and my reproductive system would never be used for politics."

“I’d go out at night wearing short skirts without getting blamed for being raped, and I wouldn’t even need to wear short skirts because, hey, I’d have a penis, and when you have a penis you don’t need to put yourself on display.”

We see sexual assault as accidental, she says, or as acted out by men who are sociopaths. However, a 1993 StatsCan survey showed half of Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of sexual or physical violence.

“We still tend to phrase rape as abnormal—‘What is it that made this man rape?’—as if it’s an oddity, not part of society."

Jones says sexual assault is systematically deployed against women worldwide.

“I think we have to consider it an act of terror that’s upon women in our society. It’s so endemic to our society and so many women suffer from it.”

Sexual assault by men is the same rape for all women, she says, but it takes on different forms depending on race, class and cultural background.

“When it comes to women of colour, it’s who’s considered ‘rapeable,’ and that’s where the difference is." Like sex workers and women living in poverty, Jones says women of colour are more vulnerable because they are not considered ‘real’ women. “So raping that woman isn’t the same as raping a white woman, a white middle-class woman, in many cases.”

When black women were considered property, slave owners would often rape them, sometimes to produce more slaves. Jones says labouring women were not considered real women because of their muscular bodies, and they weren’t considered vulnerable because the assumption was they could protect themselves: “She could have fought him off, so she must have wanted it.”

Even today, Jones says black women aren’t considered human in a lot of ways. In fashion ads, black women are presented as backdrops to white women. Dark black women are considered threatening and non-human, she says.

“Black women aren’t in the position where people see them as fully human, as receptive of any kind of generosity. So that makes you rapeable.”

White women don’t often report rape because they fear blame or disbelief from authorities due to sexism, but the Avalon Centre and Jones agree women of colour are at increased risk because of racism.

Jones says police are less likely to believe women of colour when they report sexual assault. On the other hand, black women are less likely to trust white authorities because of Nova Scotia’s history and reputation of unfair law enforcement.

“It’s not your people who are coming to take the report,” Jones says. “It’s going to be a bunch of white male cops—or white females—not necessarily people who understand you.”

As a result, the sexual assaults of black women go unreported.

Because the African Nova Scotian community is so close-knit, and because the majority of sexual assaults are by acquaintances, a black woman may not report rape by a neighbour or relative. The same is true within immigrant populations, according to Jones and Avalon: due to the small populations of immigrant communities, women risk social isolation if they report sexual assault to police.

There are fewer reports of sexual assault in Aboriginal communities as well, according to Avalon, and Aboriginal women are three times more likely to be sexually assaulted than non-Aboriginal women.

An Amnesty International report from 2004 showed that racist and sexist attitudes toward Canadian Aboriginal women made them more vulnerable to sexual assaults. Several studies over the last decade showed Aboriginal women had less access to justice in Canada because of racist and sexist stereotypes.

“The portrayal of the squaw is one of the most degraded, most despised and most dehumanized anywhere in the world,” wrote Metis professor of Native Studies Emma LaRoque in 1994. “The ‘squaw’ is the female counterpart to the Indian male ‘savage’ and as such she has no human face, she is lustful, immoral, unfeeling and dirty.”

According to a Canadian research paper from 1998, “Aboriginal Women: Invisible Victims of Violence,” up to 75 per cent of sexual assault survivors in Aboriginal communities are young women under 18. Half of those are under 14. One-quarter are younger than seven.

“Such a grotesque dehumanization has rendered all Native women and girls vulnerable to gross physical, psychological and sexual violence,” LaRoque wrote. “I believe that there is a direct relationship between these horrible racist/sexist stereotypes and violence against women and girls.”

As a result of these lingering stereotypes, and distrust between communities, Jones says silence surrounds the sexual assault of coloured women.

“You don’t hear black women speaking out,” she says. “If you go to something like Take Back The Night, there’s three or four black women total."

On a wall just inside the Dalhousie Women’s Centre, flash photos from last year’s Take Back The Night protest show white women marching Halifax’s dark streets together.

“It’s not old news that mainstream feminism has tended to focus on issues relevant to middle-class white women and ignored women of colour, poor women. I think there’s a lot of distrust. Affirmative action has tended to benefit white women. White women have been co-oppressors in a lot of cases. So on the one hand white women suffered patriarchy, but at the same time when white women allied themselves with white men*, they helped put down women of colour as well. It’s not like women of colour aren’t aware of that.”

* White women also allied with white men against black men. Historically, white men carried out a lynching when a white woman claimed to be sexually assaulted by a black man. When lynching was common, consensual interracial sex was also common, but white women often feared social isolation for having sex with black men.

*Name has been changed.

This story is Part 2 of a three-part series originally by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op.

Don't Rape, Part I

Kaley — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:28:54 +0000

Society teaches 'Don’t get raped' rather than 'Don’t rape'

Disclaimer: Some scenes in this story may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault. Names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of sexual assault survivors.

HALIFAX—Jenna never wants to see her purple semi-formal dress again. She loves it, but she is reminded of that night in early April when someone slipped what she suspects was Ketamine into her drink.

When she finished class at 4 pm that day, Jenna rushed to her friend’s place to get ready. She wore her mom’s sparkly earrings and bracelet, black kitten heels and the silky, knee-length dress. It was the end-of-the-year celebration she’d been waiting for—a chance to blow off some steam with her friends and classmates at Dalhousie.

She remembers everything about that night—feeling happy, dancing to bad music with her friends at The Palace—up to a point. It’s as if the rest of the evening didn’t happen. She woke up in her bed feeling nauseous and hung over. She stepped into the shower and felt bruises on her chest. It took her the rest of the day to piece together what happened. When she did, she felt embarrassed. She recalled blurry flashbacks of a man in her room, on the third floor of her house. He was white, but she doesn’t remember anything else about him, only that he sat there in her computer chair, looking at her from across the room. Jenna asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t.

At the hospital, nurses confirmed her suspicions with a rape kit. They gave her a list of side effects associated with Ketamine, a “date rape” drug. Her symptoms fit perfectly. The police took her pretty purple dress for DNA evidence.

We tell women to cover their drinks, to dress conservatively, and to walk home in groups—never alone at night. While Jenna still thinks those are great ideas, she says they didn’t work for her. She covered her drink as often as she could that night, and she stuck with her friends. Jenna worries no-one is looking at the big picture. It’s not her fault she was raped; she doesn’t take responsibility. Instead, she blames the man who raped her. Too often the media, the police, our parents and even our friends are quicker to point out flaws in sexual assault survivors’ actions.

"Don’t get raped"

Section 271(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada defines “simple sexual assault” as: Any attack of a sexual nature in which force is used. No physical injury is necessary to prove that an offence has occurred. When prosecuted as an indictable offence, this form of sexual assault carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Nova Scotia has the highest rate of sexual assaults in the country—double the national average, according to a 2009 report by the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. A 2006 Halifax Regional Police report shows that on average one sexual offence is reported per day in Halifax. However, a 2005 Juristat report showed only eight per cent of sexual assaults are reported in Nova Scotia.

This year in Halifax the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre declared May Sexual Assault Awareness Month. On May 20, at Province House, politicians and community members spoke out publicly against sexual assault.

Avalon’s mission is to shift responsibility from the survivor to the attacker by educating the public.

The centre defines sexual assault as: “Any form of sexual activity that has been forced by one person upon another. Without consent, it is sexual assault. Sexual assault can happen between people of the same or opposite sex. It includes any unwanted act of a sexual nature such as kissing, fondling, oral sex, intercourse or other forms of penetration, either vaginal or anal.”

Before we begin our interview, Jackie Stevens, the Avalon Co-ordinator of Community Education, closes her door, as she usually does when someone comes into her office. When a woman, or sometimes a man, sits in the comfy chair beside her desk, Stevens—wearing electric-blue cat-eye glasses—doesn’t judge or offer advice. Instead she gives the person plenty of information so he or she can make an educated decision.

Too often the people who sit in that chair blame themselves.

“If I hadn’t trusted that person, if I hadn’t gone out drinking with my friends, this wouldn’t have happened to me,” the sexual assault survivors tell Stevens.

Rather than automatically thinking that way, she says society needs to see that an attacker has chosen to take advantage of someone who is vulnerable.

When Stevens reads articles about drunk driving, the police are quoted telling people to stop drinking and driving. But when she reads articles about sexual assault, there is no warning telling would-be attackers not to rape. Instead, the authorities tell potential victims to take precautions.

She doesn’t claim to see every article, but yellowing copies of the Chronicle Herald are piled alongside today’s issue in a bin behind her.

In a Metro News article from March 19, 2010, Dalhousie University spokesperson Billy Comeau told students to “be aware of their surroundings and to take all precautions when they are out travelling” in response to a man grabbing a 19-year-old female student from behind in Halifax’s South End. In a Chronicle Herald article from May 14, 2010, a prosecutor told parents to “watch what their children are doing, both online and within the proximity of their house and outside the house,” in response to a Halifax woman allegedly luring a girl over the Internet and sexually assaulting her.

“Rather than always putting out the messages of ‘don’t walk alone’ or ‘don’t drink’ or ‘don’t talk to strangers’—all of those things—we need to say ‘don’t sexually assault,’” Stevens declares.

As a result of these misplaced messages, we say, "She shouldn’t have been walking home alone late at night," or, "She shouldn’t have worn a short skirt," rather than, "He shouldn’t have raped her."

The way a woman dresses or acts does not cause or prevent sexual assault; an attacker rapes someone because they want to exert power and control over him or her. The attacker is solely responsible for the crime. However, this responsibility is lost in translation through the police, the courts and the media.

Eighty-four per cent of people over the age of 15 who are sexually assaulted are women, according to the 2009 Status of Women Canada report. More than 90 per cent of those accused are men.

Sexual assault is a social problem, Stevens says, with lingering patriarchal structures* at the root of offenses by men toward women.

“There’s a lot of perception of sexual assault as an isolated incident that happens to certain people and it’s perceived as a very individual issue. The Avalon Centre takes the approach that sexual assault is a social issue and that the root causes are based in patriarchy, violence, oppression and inequality. Sexual violence is just one form of how that inequality and power imbalance is played out.”

Stevens says sexual assault and violence against women is interconnected with sexism and other forms of oppression such as racism, homophobia, and discrimination based on disability, gender identity, cultural background and lifestyle choices.

“Often times people who do experience sexual violence may be targeted for very specific reasons because of their vulnerability,” she says.

Jane Doe*, a local activist who also works at the Dalhousie Women’s Centre, wouldn’t be considered pushy if she were a man. Her voice is louder than the average woman’s. Her tone is aggressive.

“If I’m too confident, I’m a bitch,” she says.

Doe agrees that the root causes of male to female sexual assault are male privilege and the imbalance of power.

“Women weren’t legally human beings until 1920. If you’re property up until 1920, what role did sexual assault play in the world? Zero. There’s no such thing as rape—only for women. The pressure was on women to not allow men to ‘ruin’ them because women’s value and worth was placed in their virginity, their purity, so they could sell their sexuality to a man as property.”

As a result of historical imbalances, she says young men often feel entitled to “get drunk and get laid,” especially in a university atmosphere.

One in five male university students surveyed in a 2006 StatsCan study said forced intercourse was alright “if he spends money on her,” “if he’s stoned or drunk,” or “if they have been dating for a long time.”

One in five Canadian women surveyed in a Juristat report said they had unwanted sex with a man because they were overwhelmed by the man’s continued arguments and pressure.

“If we can change the response and how we think about sexual assault then we will change the rates of sexual assaults because it becomes less natural, less normalized; there’s more public scrutiny and judgment around it,” Doe says. “The problem is, it’s very much a part of male culture.”

*According to Avalon, “patriarchy” refers to “the current societal framework, the structure of which has historically kept men in positions of power and authority in society, and has encouraged the domination of other nations, races and cultures of people for economic and political gain.” In the not-so-distant past, women were placed in inferior roles and their sexual, financial and personal autonomy were suppressed. That framework still lingers today; women are still not equal to men.

*Name has been changed.

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op. This story was produced by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Queer Country

hillarybain — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:00:34 +0000

Mapping queer liberation in rural Nova Scotia

HALIFAX—It all started with a bike trip. During a long distance cycle from Halifax to Pictou County in July, 2008, Sonia Edworthy and Lynne Hood discovered what they called “Queer Paradise” in rural Nova Scotia.

The Mermaid and the Cow campground is situated among beautiful rolling hills, red dirt roads, forests and farmland. It is a place dedicated to providing a safe and fun camping experience for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) communities and their queer-positive friends.

"I have lived on this farm for 31 years; it's a beautiful place, and it was time to share it," says Jane Morrigan, lesbian, owner of the campground and former dairy farmer, of her decision to open the campground eight years ago. Morrigan loves to explain her connection to the land and the farm: "It's been an intensely powerful force, giving inspiration, hope, sustenance and comfort. Being so close to nature, so close to the beauty of the universe, virtually on my doorstep, has made the difference between getting through things and not getting through things."

Edworthy and Hood, along with their friend Kelly Baker, who was writing her master’s thesis on the experience of rural queer in Nova Scotia, returned to the campground a few months later. In the midst of a snowstorm, they planned a summer event that would embrace the spirit of camp and camping, of coming out and being out.

"I think part of our motivation to organize Camp Out was to create a space outside of the more typically sanctioned spaces for queer people to get together,” says Edworthy. “To create a space that was real and open and safe for people."

"Having experienced a lot of homophobia while growing up, and continuing to face it at my workplace, I wanted to be able to talk about how homophobia and oppression hasn't stopped,” says Hood, of her reasons for organizing the event. "The pieces that are celebrated are there, like freedom, diversity and equality, but there's still so much work to be done."

Camp Out took place on a weekend in July 2009 to celebrate LGBTQ activism in the Maritimes. The event sought to connect and exchange, face-to-face, with rural and urban, older and younger queers; to hear the stories of how it used to be—and how it is; to get a sense of history in rural and urban contexts, and to link the past and present together in the ongoing struggle for human rights.

The Mermaid and the Cow was not the only inspiration for organizing the weekend. The organizers agree that Baker's master's thesis was a prominent inspiration for having the gathering. Baker had recently finished her thesis, and presented her findings at Camp Out.

Baker came out to her community at age 17, in grade 12 high school. She hails from Port Medway, a rural Nova Scotian community on the South Shore, population 200.

"It's important not to paint all small town places as homophobic, as the history books do," says Baker over a coffee in Halifax's North End. "Much of the academic literature traces gay and lesbian liberation back to the cities. If you presuppose that all queer people come out in the city, you leave out so many."

Baker found the academic literature on the subject of coming out in rural areas was mapped onto migration from rural to urban spaces. She discovered a gap in the theory that failed to explain those who didn't move to the city, and those with strong ties to home. People felt more acceptance in small towns than the literature portrayed.

In her thesis work, she interviewed 14 people who had either always lived in rural Nova Scotia, or were born and raised in rural Nova Scotia, moved to the city, then moved back to rural Nova Scotia, with some participants originating from outside the province.

"For many who went to the cities in the '80s, they felt alienated. Although the presence of other queers was satisfying, they didn't feel the sense of community they were looking for."

Baker's experience is the same: her family had lived in Port Medway for six generations. They were so established in the community that when she came out, she was generally accepted. Now Baker lives in Halifax's North End, but she still visits the small fishing town, with it's wooden fishing boats, lighthouses, and clapboard housing.

One similarity she found among her subjects, predominantly women, was that Pictou was "a drawing card" for queer women. Twenty-five years ago, they had weekend campovers of mainly lesbian women, including workshops, communal meals, music and informal gatherings. The rural and the urban were not so separate, as lesbian conferences in the city drew rural dwellers, and vice versa.

"These camping get-togethers probably looked a lot like Camp Out," says Baker.

The theme of Camp Out, announced on the hand-drawn posters that were pasted around Halifax in the summer, read: "Exploring LGBTQ activism in the Maritimes PAST and PRESENT."

Although she recognizes that queer activism in Nova Scotia has always existed, Morrigan thinks the turning point for queer organizing in Nova Scotia was 1994— over the incident known as Skokewall.

In 1994, Roseanne Skoke, a homophobic Liberal MP representing Pictou County, stood up in Parliament and denounced homosexuals, declaring that natural law should deal with all deviants. It was the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, largely credited as the first moment in American history when the homosexual community fought back against state policy that discriminated based on sexual orientation. Morrigan and her partner had just returned from the Gay Games in New York. They had a sense of being part of an unstoppable force that was going to win, even in Nova Scotia. They began to organize, protest, demanding Skoke's resignation, leading to a rally in New Glasgow, across the street from her office, with over 100 people in attendance.

Garnering national attention, it got the movement rolling. A group in Pictou formed, called the Homosexualist Agenda. Skoke had said, "These people have an agenda," so they turned the phrase on its head: their agenda was for freedom, equality, and pride.

In the spring of 2008, Pictou County witnessed a resurgence of queer mobilization when local municipalities voted to prevent the flying of rainbow flags on municipal flagpoles. Rallies were held in Pictou and Truro, where over 100 queer people and their allies gathered. This is where Morrigan first met Kelly Baker.

"In 2008, when Truro banned the flying of the rainbow flag, it was a reminder that there are rural queer communities, and that local non-queer residents are also motivated for justice," says Baker.

Older participants of Camp Out felt encouraged by meeting younger queer activists. Robin Metcalfe, former member of the Gay Alliance for Equality, active in gay rights struggle in the 1970's in Halifax, agreed. "For me, I saw that there is a new wave of queer activism."

David Parker is a freelance journalist and queer activist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a member of the Halifax Media Co-op. He was born and raised in southern Ontario.

This article was produced by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Camp Out

Valentine's Play

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 06:06:04 +0000

Reflections from a women’s bathhouse

As we step past frosted glass doors into a small, well-lit foyer, my heart is pumping. The sound of excited voices through a second set of doors leaves me wondering what to expect. Feeling exhilarated by the space and slightly flushed by two glasses of wine, I notice my palms are clammy. This is my second time at Shedogs Bathhouse.

An older, very butch lady meets my friend and me at the front window. While taking IDs and tickets, and offering towels, she relays the rules: respect, consent, confidentiality. Allowing our entry through the interior set of doors, she directs us to room four, where we can change and leave our belongings. All the lockers are taken because it is a full house tonight.

My only question, “Have we missed the fisting workshop?” is met with, “Starts in 10 minutes.”

The veneer of security is understandable. Bathhouses have long been targeted as hotbeds of homosexual activity. In 2000, Toronto police raided Pussy Palace, a women's bathhouse night at Club Toronto. Police, almost all of them male, entered the establishment and walked around, taking the names and addresses of some ten women and questioning volunteers.

Traditionally, gay bathhouses are places where men can go to have sex with other men, regardless of sexuality or social status. Bathhouses for women are much more rare. Twice a year the local Halifax men’s bathhouse, Seadogs, hosts a queer ladies' night for woman-identified people. Tonight is the ladies' Valentine's Day bathhouse.

Room four is one of many small rooms off a long, dimly lit corridor. Each is equipped with a small bed, wall-to-wall mirrors and a handful of condoms and little lube packages scattered like candy on the clean, white sheets. In one room there is an erotica-reading party, while others are occupied by lovers. We are told that the rooms on the main floor have a “doors-open policy.” Private rooms are in the basement; ten dollars for a key.

After stripping down to our underwear in room four, we continue down the hallway. Guests are asked to change upon entry, which can be interpreted any way we like. Others don bathing suits, lingerie, tops, bottoms, or nothing at all. In the hallway someone passes us wearing only a harness. The sauna, hot tub and showers are all occupied by lounging ladies soaking up the steamy air and sultry sights.

Down a narrow stairway at the back is the basement. It consists of an open hallway, more small rooms, and an S&M dungeon where tonight’s workshops are taking place. Tonight there is a fisting demonstration.

The volunteer lies in a sling in the small dungeon packed with eager learners. Self-identified “Sex Geek” Andrea Zanin is gloved with black latex, promoting safer sex as she offers her tips and techniques. We learn that typically, fisting does not involve forcing a clenched fist into a bodily orifice. Instead, all five fingers are kept straight and held as close together as possible, then slowly inserted into a well-lubricated vagina or rectum. Once insertion is complete, the fingers either naturally clench into a fist or remain straight.

”It may seem extreme, but fisting is in fact one of the most intimate and sensual kinds of penetration two people can enjoy,” Zanin encourages, while caressing her eager volunteer.

I am told by a friend that the volunteer had met Zanin only 20 minutes before the workshop. She had attained the position during a Bathhouse planning meeting because of a deep enjoyment of extreme penetration and fisting. An obvious fan of public play, the volunteer appeared relaxed despite the 40 of us eagerly crowded around her. She gives in to her pleasure, allowing all to observe an intimate display between strangers.

The Bathhouse is filled with women of all makes and ages who appreciate and are affectionate with one another. Halifax is a small city and all the faces here are familiar. Admittedly, running into the lady who sat next to me at last night’s organizing meeting, or the waitress at my local coffee shop, is a bit of a rush. However, regardless of these relationships we all seem to be able to transcend the barriers built in our daily lives in order to create a safe and positive sexual space for ourselves and each other.

For me, participating in this space fulfills different needs: on one level it is purely sexual; on another it is deeply social; on another level it fulfills the need to resist. Our daily lives are controlled on many levels. Society tells us what and who to desire. These desires are then commodified and sold back to us through a plethora of bodily products. Through challenging our comfort levels and pushing our own boundaries we are able to regain some semblance of a collective power—the power of femininity, of raw pleasure and fluid desire.

The air is alive with intrigue, which for some leads to kisses, touching and even hot sex. And everyone is allowed to watch.

Jill fights the right in Halifax and works to oppose capitalism and all forms of oppression.

Seadogs

Laying the Law (Down)

dru — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:23:56 +0000

Legal context for sex work in Canada

Over the past 20 years at least 60 sex workers have ‘gone missing’ or have been murdered in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and the bodies of at least 20 murdered sex workers have been found in Edmonton. Current laws on prostitution and the manner in which they are applied put sex workers’ lives in danger by legitimizing and perpetuating abuse and violence against sex workers. Sex workers on the street are disproportionately affected by these criminal laws and specifically targeted for violence. Very recently, in Canada and elsewhere, these laws have allowed individuals, like Gary Ridgeway, dubbed “the Green River killer,” to use the ambiguity of these laws to his sordid advantage. In 2003, Ridgeway justified the murder of over 40 prostitutes and declared that he “picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

The criminalization of sex workers prevents them from accessing social protection and contributes to grave human-rights abuses of sex workers. This criminalization explains why sex workers are too often exploited, beaten, raped and killed.

Violence is a reality that sex workers around the world face everyday: violence through stigma, violence from the government, and violence from policies that put sex workers’ lives in danger. While prostitution is legal, virtually every activity surrounding it is not. The criminal code prohibits the public solicitation of business ("communicating"), the management and use of regular work sites ("bawdy-houses"), and any other managerial activity ("procuring"). This contradictory legislation makes it nearly impossible for sex workers to work safely and without intimidation from clients, police and residents. Not only has sex work been criminalized to this extent but sex workers and clients are subjected to oppressive treatment from their communities in terms of exclusion, violence and extreme repression. As reported by Stella, a Montreal-based sex-workers’ organization, “in 2002 residents of a central neighbourhood in Montreal went [after sex workers] out into the streets with baseball bats. The media tagged the event ‘a witch-hunt’. We saw the same thing in the summer of 2000 when police operations against clients began with intensity: three times more acts of violence were reported in Stella’s Bad Tricks and Attackers List."

Lobbies to amend, repeal, or reform prostitution law have had a vibrant presence since the 1970s. When sex workers began organizing for decriminalization in the 1970s, the term ‘sex worker’ rather than ‘prostitute’ was used to define their movement. This new term was created at the onset of this new social movement in an attempt to counteract claims that sex work is inherently exploitative and to emphasize that sex workers view their work as employment and themselves as workers. Sex workers’ fight for decriminalization of their work and better working conditions has since grounded much of the sex workers’ rights movement. In addition to this, sex-worker leadership and self-determination stands at the forefront of sex workers’ demands.

The sex-workers’ rights movement is not without its opponents. Among the most vocal sources of opposition are feminist abolitionists who view sex work as an inherent exploitation of the body and sex workers as victims with little agency. These feminists typically oppose decriminalization and concentrate on the eradication of sex work entirely. This perspective has posed grave difficulty for sex workers attempting to seek their rights. Many of the policy reforms that feminist abolitionists propose also criminalize sex workers and their clients, and perpetuate a cycle of abuse and exploitation. This perspective, at best, excludes sex workers, and, at worst, results in policies that impact negatively on sex workers’ lives and work. Whereas the majority of the mainstream feminist movement (including abolitionists and other liberal women’s groups) is seeking to end the exploitation they see as sex work, sex workers and other feminists are seeking to end exploitative conditions in sex work caused by dangerous working conditions and oppressive legislative contexts.

The above debate is one that has, unfortunately, stalled the progress of law reform efforts that seek safer working conditions for sex workers. Organizing around law reform has therefore posed a double challenge: Sex workers not only have to combat the negative stereotypes of sex work that feminist abolitionists perpetuate, they have also been obligated to educate parliamentary leaders on the realities of sex workers’ lives. For this reason sex workers insist on leadership around sex-work issues and on having input into the creation of laws that affect their lives.

In 2002, Canadian sex workers had a small opportunity to educate parliamentary leaders on sex workers’ realities, in the attempt to create safer working conditions. Vancouver East Riding MP Libby Davies had responded to the violence in her community by calling for the creation of a parliamentary committee (SSLR) to review current prostitution law. However, sex worker organizations found that the recommendations presented in their 2006 report did little to improve working conditions for sex workers; instead, the report encouraged common stereotypes of sex workers. Other initiatives have included a constitutional court challenge taking place in Ontario (2007) and one to take place in Vancouver in the next year.

Acknowledging that sex workers are in the best position to speak to their own realties, sex workers have, alongside these legal initiatives, created education initiatives and campaigns to highlight the human-rights abuses caused by current legislation. In Canada alone there are hundreds of sex workers organizing for their rights. Stella, a community resource group created in 1995 and run by and for sex workers, has been leading education campaigns, violence awareness, community building and empowerment strategies. Over the past 30 years numerous sex worker initiatives have been organized to create a solid front against human-rights abuses and to promote safer working conditions for sex workers worldwide.

Sex workers and their supporters insist that law reform is only part of the solution to a much bigger problem caused by stigma and discrimination against sex workers. Law reform has been the focus of morality debates around prostitution while the morality that guides prostitution laws has not yet been put into question. The current criminal code in conjunction with the discriminatory application of these laws contributes to a culture of indifference and violence towards sex workers for which all members of society need to be accountable. Sex workers need to be acknowledged as experts in law-reform debates, and their perspectives be privileged. Until sex workers are acknowledged as experts about their own experience and considered by the broader culture as full members of society, communities of sex workers will thrive and continue to create empowering tools by which they can put an end to the human-rights abuses they face.

Jenn Clamen is a sex-work activist based in Montreal, Canada. Next month in the Dominion Jenn will explore labour issues for sex workers and sex workers' organizing within labour movements

Resources for sex-worker groups and further reading:

Canada:
www.chezstella.org
www.lacoalitionmontreal.com
www.maggiestoronto.ca
www.eroticguild.com

International:
www.nswp.org
www.bayswan.org
www.durbar.org
www.empowerfoundation.org
www.ziteng.org.hk
www.iusw.org
www.apnsw.org

Sex Workers Demonstrate