The Dominion - sexism

Honouring the Dead, Standing with the Survivors

Tim McSorley — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:40:08 +0000

Seventh annual Sisters in Spirit vigil still seeking answers, action for missing and murdered women

MONTREAL—Close to 200 people joined Montreal's seventh annual Sisters in Spirit vigil and march last night. It was one of more than 160 vigils across North America on October 4 in commemoration of the thousands of Native women who have been murdered or gone missing over the past three decades.

Since it was founded in 2005 by Bridget Tolley, an Algonquin woman whose mother was killed when Surete du Quebec officers hit her with their car, organizers of the Sisters in Spirit vigil have argued that government and police need to take the situation of missing and murdered Indigenous women more seriously. Estimates range from 600 (according to police) to more than 3000 (according to researchers and human rights activists) Native women who have faced disappearance or a violent death since the 1980s.

While violence against Indigenous women may have appeared more often in the headlines due to high profile cases like the William Pickton trial in BC, vigil organizer Bianca Mugyenyi said people need to realize that this is a national crisis, where women from across the country find themselves threatened and in danger on a daily basis.

“Our goal is to raise awareness of high rates of violence that Native women face in this country,” said Mugyenyi, who is with Missing Justice, a Native women solidarity group that has helped organize the Montreal vigil since 2009.

Nina Segalowitz, an Innu woman and frontline case worker with abused women, echoed Mugyenyi's concerns. “We've lost a lot of women in Montreal to violence, from partners and ex-partners...While we're here for Native women, I like to think that we're here for all women who are abused simply for being women.”

First Nations women are five times more likely than other sectors of the population to face violence, she said.

Speakers at the vigil pointed to two significant places where action is needed: government action to ensure the safety of Native women, but also transformation and education in society to decrease violence against women in general, and against Native women in particular.

Mugyenyi had particularly harsh criticism for recent actions of the federal government. Budget cuts have led to the significant reduction and elimination of resources meant to combat violence against Native women. One aspect has been the federally funded Sisters in Spirit program, organized by the Native Women's Association of Canada. The federal government provided funding to the program from 2005 until 2011, in order to build a database of information on unsolved cases of missing and murdered Native women. In 2010, the Conservative government announced it would not continue funding the program, and that the group would need to cease operating. The decision came as a blow, since the program had already built profiles of more than 500 cases and was seen as doing effective work.

Instead, the government announced $10 million in funding, mostly for police operations.

Mugyenyi said that this decision, as well as the Conservative government's “tough on crime” stance, will do little to improve the situation of Native women.

“In the case of missing and murdered women, the police are part of the problem,” she said. “They make assumptions, perpetuate stereotypes. Bridget Tolley's mother was killed by the Surete du Quebec. She's been calling for an independent inquiry, outside of the police, which the government has continued to turn down.” In 2001, Tolley's mother was hit by an SQ police car and died. The investigation into her death, which cleared all involved of wrongdoing, was led by the brother of the officer at the wheel of the car.

Sisters in Spirit has been instrumental in researching and recording cases of native women who have been killed or gone missing.

Instead of more police operations, said Mugyenyi, better education around violence towards women and more social services to help women who are in precarious social situations are needed. She also said the government should heed the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in their support of a national inquiry into violence against native women. That call was put out in December 2011, but the federal government has yet to take action.

While government and police actions play an important role, another significant issue that speakers pointed to is the need for more action against sexism and racism in all communities.

Segalowitz added that she was at the vigil not just to honour the women who have died, but also to stand beside the women who have been able to survive and carry on, and because of her three children, whom she hopes will not have to deal with the same issues of violence and abuse.

Irkar Beljars, a Mohawk man who has helped organize the vigil over the past several years, called on the men in the crowd to make sure they pass the word on and tell their friends where they were tonight, and why it is important to raise their voices against violence towards women.

After seven years of vigils, Mugyenyi expressed hopefulness that the message is being heard. “Every year there are more people, media coverage goes up,” she said. “It's encouraging to be here to see so many people come out to honour the lives of missing and murdered women.”

Tim McSorley is an editor with the Media Co-op and a contributor with the Co-op media de Montreal.

Sisters in Spirit 2012

Buffalo Hat Singers

SIS 2012 signs 2

Sisters in Spirit 2012 signs

Fight the Fires that Be

Martin Lukacs — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:42:29 +0000

Women struggle to make fire-fighting profession more inclusive

LONDON, ON—Chelsea Merkt-Kit leans back casually in her chair. Her surroundings are calm. For the moment, she’s without her team, a group of men she calls her “brothers.” Her long blonde hair is pulled back into a neat and tidy ponytail. Her navy blue uniform is oversized and engulfs her petite frame.

The crest on her uniform reads the same as every man’s in the building: “Be caring, be safe, and prevent harm.” At 400 Horton Street, London, Ontario’s central fire house, these are words by which men and women alike live and die.

But Merkt-Kit isn’t who you would usually picture climbing a ladder into a burning building. The 27-year-old Waterloo native is 5’7 and 125 pounds.

“People are always surprised when they hear what I do,” she says. “Especially when I’m in a dress and heels.”

She’s one of only eight women currently working as a professional firefighter in London, a city that boasts a force of almost 400.

“Of course, it’s a male dominated profession,” Merkt-Kit admits. She cautiously explains that you need to be a certain type of woman to survive as a firefighter.

“You have to get along well with men, and allow them to be themselves,” she says.

Yet the small number of female firefighters in Canada paints a picture of a service still dictated not simply by personality, but by the sturdy persistence of gendered labour roles.

Women account for only three per cent of professional firefighters in Canada, says Paul Laffin, a data dissemination officer at Statistics Canada. In Ontario, women in firefighting are paid on average $13,500 less than their male counterparts.

Nevertheless, Merkt-Kit is among the first generation of female firefighters to benefit from earlier steps toward equality in the workplace, says Karen Simpson, an International Trustee with the International Association of Women in Fire and Emergency Services (also known as I-Women), in a phone interview from Chatham-Kent. She’s been a professional firefighter in Ontario for seven years.

She hopes that women like herself, and Merkt-Kit, can create another wave of change in the service, one which will make firefighting increasingly open and safe for women.

Over the last decade, Simpson says, training to become a firefighter in Canada has become more accessible and standardized. Women are entering the workforce with more confidence, having proved themselves physically and mentally against the men in school.

And while these systemic changes speak volumes, it’s the women who blazed the trail for the “new generation” who know best how far firefighting has come.

Women such as Kim Harrison. The team captain of the Medical Response Unit at the Kearney Volunteer Fire Department in Kearney, Ontario, Harrison has been fighting fires for 26 years.

Forty per cent of Harrison’s team are women.

“A lot of women assume they can’t join, that they don’t have enough strength,” Harrison said over the phone from Kearney. “We are trying to open doors for them.”

She does so by serving as a role model herself. Harrison gives tours of the fire station to women interested in the service, and often speaks at local schools. She urges children to use the word “firefighter” rather than “fireman.” For almost three decades, she’s been slowly working to change people’s attitudes.

“This is not a male place anymore,” Harrison says proudly.

Fire Chief Rick Phillip is thankful for her presence. For Phillip, whose wife and grand-daughter are also firefighters, women in firefighting is only natural. “They are far more compassionate,” he adds.

Overcoming the systemic difficulties that prevent women from joining the service is also necessary if Ontario hopes to keep both professional and volunteer fire squads full, says Carl G. Pearson, president of the Fire Fighters Association of Ontario.

“Half the population is female,” he said in a phone interview, adding that the assumption that female firefighters are less capable than their male counterparts is simply incorrect.

A department such as Chief Phillip’s in Kearney is a glimpse into a promising future, says I-Women’s Simpson. Yet, she says, there is much more work to be done.

“It doesn’t matter if women are as fit or better trained. If the administration is not prepared to accept women, there is going to be a struggle,” says Simpson.

Only a few weeks ago, Simpson and the I-Women organization demanded that the concerns of women in firefighting be heard at the US National Fallen Firefighters Foundation’s 2nd Annual Research Symposium.

Right now, Simpson explained, there is no data exploring the relationship between fighting fire and reproductive health, and specifically how chemicals produced in a fire can affect a woman’s ability to have healthy babies.

I-Women managed, for the first time, to get the questions of reproductive health discussed as stand-alone issues at the conference.

Simpson hopes that within the next three to five years, with adequate funding and research, the fire service will start to properly address these concerns. While the spark of change has been ignited, it’s going to be up to the “next generation” to keep “pounding their fists and stomping their feet.”

It’s probably going to depend on women like Merkt-Kit, who was married last year. Her husband is a professional firefighter in Waterloo. And while she is a face for how far the service has come, she may soon be affected by where firefighting, for women, has not yet gone.

When asked if the two had yet started a family, she smiled.

“No, not yet, but soon.”

Lisa Laventure is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Western Ontario.

Firefighter illustration

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.

The US has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan

dru — Mon, 07 May 2007 01:42:32 +0000

Afghan MP speaks about the US-backed warlords currently in power

The following is a transcript of the speech given by Malalai Joya, member of the Afghan Parliament, given at the University of Los Angeles on Tuesday April, 10th:

In the name of Democracy and Peace –

Dear friends, first of all I extend my deep regards and thanks to the friends in the University of California to provide the opportunity for me to be here and share my point of view with you and inform you about the ongoing tragedy in my crying Afghanistan.

While the pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalists groups and individuals of Afghanistan are being marginalized, suppressed and silenced, you give a helping hand to me as a small voice of my suffering people to speak about the crisis in Afghanistan and terrible conditions of its people. You in fact play your role in raising awareness on what is going on in my devastated country.

Respected friends, over five years passed since the US-led attack on Afghanistan. Probably many of you are not well aware of the current conditions of my country and expect me to list the positive outcomes of the past years since the US invasion. But I am sorry to tell you that Afghanistan is still chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords and is like an unconscious body taking its last breath.

The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.

The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our wounded land.

Today the Northern alliance leaders are the key power holders and our people are hostage in the hands of these ruthless gangs of killers. Many of them are responsible for butchering tens of thousands of innocent people in the past 2 decades but are in power and hold key positions in the government.

Let me list few of the key power-holders of Afghanistan:

Karim Khalili, the vice-president, is leader of a pro-Iran party called Wahdat, responsible for killing thousands of innocent people, and named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Ismael Khan, another killer warlord and lackey of the Iranian regime is the minister of water and power.
Izzatullah Wasifi, Afghanistan’s anti-corruption chief has been a convicted drug trafficker who has spent around 4 years in a Nevada state prison in the US.
General Mohammed Daoud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the anti-drug effort, is a former warlord and famous drug-trafficker.
Rashid Dostum, the chief of staff of the Afghan army, is a heartless killer and warlord, named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Qasim Fahim, former defense minister and now a Senator and adviser to Mr. Karzai is the most powerful warlord of the Northern Alliance, and accused of war crimes.

And this list has hundreds of men on it, including Sayyaf, Ulomi, Golabzoi, Rabbani, Qanooni, Mohaqiq, Mullah Rocketi, etc. They should all be removed from power and put on trial for war crimes. In fact all the major institutions in Afghanistan are occupied by warlords and drug-lords. How can we talk about democracy when our legislative, judicial and executive bodies are infected with the viruses of fundamentalism and drug mafia?

Many freedom-loving individuals and groups in Afghanistan had long ago warned that bringing the criminal “Northern Alliance” back into power by the US government will pose a danger to Afghanistan. But today, most governments and world institutions accept that Afghanistan is a failed state which is heading toward disaster.

Afghans are deeply fed-up with the current situation and every day that passes they turn against the government, the foreign troops and the warlords. And the Taliban make use of it to increase their influence and acts of terror. Countries like Pakistan, Iran, Russia etc. are also meddling in Afghanistan for their own interests.

The U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in a recent report: “…Afghans are frustrated with their economic situation… They suffer from unsteady employment and economic insecurity, and are turning to illicit and illegal activity, such as corruption and opium production…the Taliban has become an alternative source of employment, recruiting the jobless as foot soldiers in the insurgency.”

In such a situation when a bunch of killers are in power, life cannot be easy for our unfortunate people. I would like to describe the tip of the iceberg on the reality of life in my bleeding Afghanistan:

Seven hundred children and 50-70 women die on a daily basis because of a lack of health services. Infant and maternal mortality rates are still very high — 1,600 to 1,900 women among each 100,000 die during childbirth. Life expectancy is less than 45 years.

The number of suicide cases by Afghan women was never as high as it is today: A month ago eighteen year old Samiya, hung herself by a rope because she was to be sold to a sixty year old man. Another woman called Bibi Gul locked herself up in the animals’ stable and burned herself to death. Later her family found nothing except her bones.

The study by the governmental agency Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission shows a marked increase in reported cases: Two years ago in Farah province, there were 15 cases of women burning themselves reported, but the number jumped to 36 in the first six months of 2006. Kandahar province had 74 cases two years ago and 77 cases in the first six months of the past year. But the real numbers are much higher.

According to a UNIFEM survey, 65% of the 50,000 widows in Kabul see suicide as the only option to get rid of their misery. UNIFEM estimates that at least one out of three Afghan women has been beaten, forced into sex or otherwise abused.

The gang-rape of young girls and women by warlords belonging to the “Northern Alliance” still continues especially in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. People have staged mass protests a number of times but no one cares about their sorrow and tears. Only a few of the rape cases find their way into the media. One shocking case was that of 11 year old Sanobar, the only daughter of an unfortunate widow who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog by a warlord. In a land where human dignity has no price, the vicious rapist of a poor girl still acts as district chief.

The Taliban continue their fascism in the eastern parts of Afghanistan where the government has no control. They carry out public executions and kidnappings. When some days ago an Italian journalist and his Afghan translator and driver were kidnapped, the Afghan government made a deal with them and released five Taliban leaders from prison so the Italian journalist was freed. But no one cared for the fate of the two innocent Afghans and both of them were beheaded by the Taliban.

A report by Human Rights Watch about war criminals in Afghanistan and the hanging of Saddam Hussein scared many Afghan criminals and now they are trying to block any efforts for their prosecution. Last month the warlord MPs, under the name of “national reconciliation” passed a bill in the parliament based on which no one can file a case or prosecute anyone for committing war crimes in the past 25 years.

I and a few other MPs raised our voices against it but as the fundamentalist warlords hold over 80% of the seats, the bill was easily approved. This bill will now provide amnesty to all criminals.

But Afghan people who have suffered terribly in the past 3 decades consider this bill an abuse against them. According to a survey conducted by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission over 80% of Afghan people want to prosecute those responsible for past crimes and brutalities and see it as the only way to experience a bright future in Afghanistan.

Even Mr. Karzai signed this disgusting bill which is regarded as a joke and abuse to the millions of Afghans who have suffered and lost their loved ones and were waiting for the day of justice. Meanwhile the killers forgave their own crimes and live without fear. Such bills officially sanction further brutalities and human rights violations against our defenseless people.

The story of Afghanistan’s reconstruction is painful: After 5 years you cannot see any serious reconstruction projects. Billions of dollars of aid has been looted by the warlords, corrupt NGOs, the UN and government officials. Afghanistan still stands 175th out of 177 countries in the UN Human Development Index and the rate of unemployment is over 40%.

The so-called “freedom of speech” in Afghanistan is another joke with our people. Let me describe my own recent experience: In early February this year, during the passage of the infamous bill of amnesty for war criminals in the parliament, I had an interview with a local TV channel; they had interviewed some other people including Sayyaf, who is a wanted criminal and member of the parliament.

The TV station broadcast an advertisement for the program a number of times in which they showed some parts of my interview. After this Sayyaf himself called the TV station and threatened them that if Joya’s interview was broadcast the consequences would be dangerous for the director. So they resorted to censorship and excluded me from the program. And this is not the first time that I have been censored in the media. Many journalists are too afraid to report my comments.

Last year the UN announced that Afghanistan under US troops could become a narco-state but today no one has any doubt that it has been changed into a mafia-state when Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s supply of opium. High-ranking officials like ministers and deputy ministers etc. have links to the drugs mafia. And all of it happens under the very noses of the thousands of foreign troops.

A mafia system is in place in Afghanistan. The US backed president Karzai and his westernized intellectuals have joined hands with fundamentalists of all brands to impose this mafia system on our people. This is the main reason for today’s problems in the deadlocked Afghanistan. Those who speak for justice are threatened with death.

My voice is always being silenced even inside the parliament and once I was physically attacked by pro-warlord and drug-lord MPs in the parliament just for speaking the truth. One of them even shouted “prostitute, take her and rape her!” Despite hating guns, I need to live under the protection of armed bodyguards to survive.

President Hamid Karzai, instead of relying on people to bring the criminal warlords to trial, appoints these criminals to higher posts. Due to his criminal-fostering policies, the people of Afghanistan hate him as someone equally responsible for the current catastrophe. Even the CIA admitted in its report recently that he has lost the people’s support and has no control outside of Kabul.

The Afghan government is the most corrupt and unpopular in the world. In a March 2007 survey conducted by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, it was revealed that about 60 percent of Afghans think the current administration is more corrupt than any other in the past two decades.

It is due to this tragic situation that returning to Afghanistan is still an unattractive option for the 4 million Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan and many more still trying to flee the country.

Dear friends, in 2001 the US government announced that it has learned from its past mistakes of supporting the fundamentalists in Afghanistan and will not repeat them. But the agonizing truth is that the US is committing the same mistakes. It is generously supporting the fundamentalists more than ever.

Besides supporting the bands of the Northern Alliance, underground efforts are going on to include some elements of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the government. The US included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on its list of most wanted terrorists, yet his party was allowed to have 34 members in the Afghan parliament, which was elected in an un-democratic and fraudulent election. I have announced a number of times that the US administration has no problem working with pro-American terrorists, but oppose only anti-American terrorists. This is the reason that our people make a mockery of the “war on terror”.

I fully agree with Kathy Gannon, an expert in Afghanistan, that “the US is not interested in peace in Afghanistan. The people who killed thousands, who patronized the drug business are in charge of the country.”

Dear friends, the US is not concerned with the suffering and disastrous conditions of our people; it is in the US’s strategic and economic interests to put our people in danger as long as its own regional interests are met. That is why our people do not consider the US a “liberator” of our country. The US invaded Afghanistan under the name of human rights and democracy but today we are as far from these values as were 5 years ago. However, since 2001 the death toll of innocent civilians as a result of the so-called “war on terror” is five times the number killed in the 9/11 tragedy.

I hope you have realized from the small taste of the problems that I just shared, that my country is still in the chains of bloody and terrorist fundamentalists. The situation in Afghanistan and the conditions of its ill-fated women will never change positively, as long as the warlords are not disarmed and both the pro-US and anti-US terrorists are not removed from the political scene of Afghanistan.

It is a clear and proven fact that no nation can donate liberation to another nation. Liberation is not money to be donated; it should be achieved in a country by the people themselves. The ongoing developments in Afghanistan and Iraq prove this claim. People of other countries only can give us a helping hand and support.

I think that the people of the US can play a great role to put pressure on their policy-makers to stop its wrong policies in Afghanistan and value the wishes of our people. I should say that unlike its government, the people of the US are great, caring and peace-loving, so the democratic-minded elements of Afghanistan can count on your support and solidarity.

The people of the US must help poor Afghan people and its democratic-minded individuals and groups, who are currently defeated and under much pressure. This is the only correct policy that can help Afghan people and guarantee a bright future for us. Unlike the US administration, the true friends of Afghan people must care about the voices of our men and women for justice; they should realize that the existence of fundamentalist groups of any brand as political and military forces, is the main cause of all the problems in Afghanistan. They should know that bringing the Northern Alliance to power was the key to all the disasters that we are experiencing today.

I am well aware of the hardships, challenges, and prospects of death from anti-democratic forces. But I trust my people and enjoy their full support and encouragement. The enemies of my people have weapons, political power and the support of the US government to suppress me. But they can never silence my voice and hide the truth. I am proud to be a beacon of hope for my people and enjoy strong support from them in my mission for democracy and freedom.

Your show of solidarity and support gives me more power and determination to fight the enemies of democracy and humanity in my devastated Afghanistan. You can give me a helping hand by providing moral support and your generous donations so that I can continue and expand my work for the benefit of the desperate and sorrowful women of Afghanistan.

The fundamentalists are counting their days to kill me, but I believe in and follow the noble saying of the freedom-loving Iranian writer Samad Behrangi:

“Death could very easily come now, but I should not be the one to seek it. Of course if I should meet it and that is inevitable, it would not matter. What matters is whether my living or dying has had any effect on the lives of others…”

Thank you. ---

Malalai Joya is Afghanistan’s youngest and most out-spoken parliamentarian. She has openly criticized the US-backed warlords that dominate the Afghan parliament. In return, she has received a continuous stream of death threats. At the age of 28, Malalai has survived 4 assassination attempts. Recently a documentary profiling her, Enemies of Happiness, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Malalai Joya is on a brief US speaking tour. For more information about Malalai Joya, please visit www.malalaijoya.com.

Malalai Joya at McGill University

Malalai Joya at McGill University 2