Are You My Mother?

by Alicia Costa

My best friend gave birth to beautiful twin boys a month ago. And this has made me really look at the way I view motherhood, friendship with women, and my own fertility choices.

I’ve never really given much thought to having children. It was just never something I was interested in. And honestly I don’t really like children (I know, I know that sounds horrible but have you been to Ikea on a Saturday? Haunting). And up until I turned 25 I thought the whole ‘biological clock ticking’ was some patriarchal construct to scare young women into having babies.

But it’s not, and over the past three years I’ve been really starting to reconsider my stance on shrugging off having a family. And it’s put me in a tail spin.

Growing up I always idolized my uncles. They left our small town, went to university, got amazing careers (one pilot, one engineer), lived in beautiful condos, and went travelling the world. They always drove new flashy cars and never had children. Very early on I wanted that life and not the one my mother had, which seemed filled with pain and sacrifice.

My mother is amazing. She is the most selfless and caring person I have ever known. She gave us everything she had. She stayed in a bad marriage for too long and sacrificed her dreams of going to university to care for my sister and I. My father was absent, abusive, and often gone for long periods of time out of town. Somehow she overcame all that to raise two productive humans. And I just know I am far too selfish to give everything I am to another being.

My friend who recently had the twins is one of the most amazing women I have in my life. We’ve been friends for eight or nine years (I’ve lost track of the time) and she has seen me through the most turbulent and complicated years of my life. The last 10 years since I left home and moved to the big city have been the most formative time in my lifetime.

I struggle with my relationships with other women. Very often they break down in a fog of competiveness, pettiness, politics, miscommunication, and mistrust. And I have been through all these things as well with this friend, but we somehow always manage to find our way back to each other. And I will ashamedly admit that when she told me she was pregnant my first thought was, “How is this going to affect me? How is this going to affect our friendship?” Read more

Posted on June 17, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism 1 Comment

The Dads Left Out of Father’s Day Marketing

by Jarrah Hodge

I want to wish a Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, but in particular, to the dads that are left out of the mainstream Father’s Day marketing. Let’s take a look at who those dads are:

Gay Dads:

How many cards do you see on the Hallmark shelves that let you send best wishes to both your moms or dads for Mother’s or Father’s day? The answer would be none. This year South Carolinian Kristiana Johnston started a Change.org petition to change that but so far the company has no plans on the books.

And if we really want to celebrate all fathers, how about taking a minute today to support gay parents’ right to marry and adopt their kids? Freedom to Marry and the Campaign for Southern Equality have put together this video about two North Carolinians who aren’t allowed to have their marriage recognized in their home state, or to adopt their four foster kids.

Read more about 8 gay families celebrating Father’s Day this year at the Freedom to Marry website.

Trans Dads:

Whether you identify as “Maddy” like Jennifer Finney Boylan, as a woman who is also a father, a man who is pregnant or has given birth, or a trans man who is parenting in any other way, Happy Father’s Day. As the author of the genderqueer Tumblr says: “These families are unique, and unique families have to be strong and loving to make it in our society.”

Dads of Colour:

Main image on Hallmark.com for Father’s Day

The lack of positive representations of dads of colour, immigrant dads and multiracial families in pop culture reinforces how we think of fathers and Father’s Day. Along with the dated ideal of masculinity we see in Father’s Day cards and advertisements comes an image of the father as white. Today on 123greetings.com, every single Father’s Day e-card that showed a dad depicted that dad as white.

Posted on June 16, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism Leave a comment

Ireland’s Abortion Legislation and Ongoing Denial of Choice

Irish anti-choice billboard

by Shelly Mitchell. Shelly just graduated from National University of Ireland, Maynooth with a B.A in Sociology and History. She is commencing post-graduate studies in September 2013 with a H.Dip in Adult and Community Education. Fell into gender studies somewhere along the way and got addicted!

One of the most popular on-going topics sweeping the Irish nation and being discussed in the Irish parliament at the moment is its abortion legislation. The divisions within the government and the general population have resulted in mass protests across the country by “pro-choice” and “pro-life” advocates. Currently in Ireland abortion is illegal and can result in a 14-year prison sentence for the woman. If and only when a woman’s life is in danger the pregnancy can be terminated, but apparently guidelines are not very clear and doctors are unsure what exactly warrants grounds for a termination.

What I find most difficult to understand about the situation regarding abortion in Ireland is: first, the vast amount of input the Catholic Church is having into this debate and second, the refusal of the government to even contemplate an abortion-on-demand policy.

In regards to the Catholic Church, taking their long history of gender inequality and more recent history of clerical abuse into account, I see no reason why they are to be involved in this debate, especially since Ireland is becoming increasingly secularised and the Church’s influence among the laity is in severe decline. The idea of abortion-on-demand has rarely even entered Irish political discourse. I find this insulting. It shows the government does not trust women like me to make clear, informed decisions over their bodies should they find themselves pregnant. It also denies women the agency and autonomy that we are supposed to have over our bodies as free Irish citizens. Read more

Posted on June 15, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism 3 Comments

An Open Letter to the Kids Who Harassed Me From Their School Bus

by Jessica Critcher

An open letter to the children who harassed me from the window of their school bus

cc: Their parents

Dear Boys,

It’s me, the angry lady from Boston. I hope you had fun on your field trip. Maybe you were in my neighborhood to see our Paul Revere statue. But my guess is that you were here to visit the New England Aquarium, because the way you yelled at me and called me names made me feel like an animal in a zoo. For their sake, I hope you were nicer to the animals. I don’t think I could forgive you if you spoke to a penguin the same way you spoke to me.

I was having a pretty good day up until I crossed in front of your school bus and you started shouting things at me. I didn’t hear all of the comments, thank goodness, but the one that stuck out the most was “You’re fat!” I heard that one repeated by a few of you, so I guess you really wanted to be sure I heard that part.

Those comments hurt my feelings, boys. But before I go any further, I need to tell you something: My feelings were not hurt because you called me fat. There is nothing wrong with being fat. I’m fatter than a lot of my friends, and some of my friends are fatter than I am. It’s a waste of time to compare myself to other people. How fat a person is does not change how smart, kind, creative, thoughtful or valuable a person is. I can be fat and still be beautiful, and even if I wasn’t beautiful, I would still be a person whose thoughts and feelings matter. Read more

Posted on June 12, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism 2 Comments

Feminism & Star Trek

by Jarrah Hodge

I have had the best week ever. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been a fan of Star Trek since I was a really little kid. There are few things I enjoy more than combining my passion for feminism with my love of Star Trek and other geeky things. That’s part of what led me to write my “Revenge of the Feminerd” column at Bitch blogs in 2011.

Anyhow, this week I found out my panel proposal for Geek Girl Con 2013, “Is Star Trek a Feminist Utopia?”, was accepted! Within a couple of days I had tracked down some other super cool panelists, including Tanya from Geekquality, Jamala Henderson from KUOW radio, and Mary Czerwinski of The Televixen and the DVD Geeks podcast. If you’re around the Seattle area in October, you should totally come check out Geek Girl Con. I’ve attended the last two years and am really excited to participate this year with these other awesome panelists.

As if that weren’t exciting enough, thanks to Mary I’ll also be coming down to Las Vegas in August to participate in her Trek Girls panel at Star Trek: Las Vegas!

Basically, I am as excited as a Ferengi rolling in a pile of latinum.

So now I have started the most fun homework project ever: watching a bunch of episodes of each of the series to refresh my memory and apply a feminist lens. If you’re a Trekkie and want to geek out with me, you can follow along at my new Tumblr, Trekkie Feminist. I’ll be doing slightly tongue-in-cheek episode recaps, shouting out some of my favourite women characters and poking loving fun at some of the failures in representation of women, people of colour, and LGBT people. I’m taking requests for specific episodes to watch and analyze, so if you have a suggestion, comment below!

Posted on June 9, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture Leave a comment

Not Enough Women Behind Canadian TV Cameras

Graphs from the WIV report on women in Canadian TV

by Jarrah Hodge

The shows we see on TV are created by a team of people. In terms of influence on a show’s finances and creative direction, the most important roles are usually directors, writers and cinematographers.

Unfortunately, a new report from the non-profit Women in View has found huge gaps in women’s representation in these key roles on Canadian TV shows. There is also a significant lack of representation of people of colour and First Nations people behind the camera. That means that even when the stories we see are about women or people of colour, chances are they were written, filmed and directed by white men (see a telling picture here). Women in media industries tend to work disproportionately in what the report calls “taking care” roles (line producers, production managers, etc.) or stereotypically feminine jobs like hair and makeup.

“I would like to believe that talent and hard work will pay off in terms of opportunities for people to earn a living in this industry; yet, it is well known that the screenwriting profession poorly reflects the diversity of society and is much more hospitable to white middle-aged males than to women, racialized minorities and seniors,” said Ryerson professor Dr. Charles Davis. “Despite the emphasis of Canadian cultural policy on the development and telling of screen stories that reflect all Canadians, the directing, cinematography and screenwriting occupations in this country are dominated by middle-aged white men.”

Some key stats coming out of the report:

Of the 272 episodes these 21 series represent, 84 per cent of directors were men, 16 per cent were women.
11 of the 21 series did not employ a single woman director on any of their episodes.
No series employed a woman cinematographer.
No racialized minority women were employed as directors in any of the 21 series.
36 per cent of the screenwriters were women; 64 per cent were men.
13 of the 21 series employed no racialized minorities or First Nations writers or directors of either sex.

Putting together this research, WIV studied the 21 Canadian live action TV series with the highest levels of investment (between $1M and $9.1M per series) from the Canada Media Fund in their 2010-2011 year. Some of the shows they looked at were Being Erica, The Borgias, Call Me Fitz, Heartland, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Murdoch Mysteries, Republic of Doyle and Rookie Blue.

These gaps show that women, First Nations people and people of colour are missing out on significant economic opportunities. Just under $100 million went into the series studied in the WIV report, and the Canadian media industry on the whole contributed $5.49 billion to our GDP in 2011. Read more

Posted on June 8, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Pop Culture Leave a comment

Feminists in Games Meet in Vancouver

Emily and Anita Sarkeesian

by Emily Yakashiro

This past weekend I attended the second annual Feminists in Games conference here in Vancouver. I’m personally not much of a gamer (although I spend a lot of time encouraging murderous plants to take down zombies), but I attended out of interest in supporting feminist media. Furthermore, I was keen to hear about the many gendered and sexist aspects of the gaming community, most infamously highlighted by Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian, who was a keynote speaker at this two-day event.

Unbeknownst to me when I registered for the event, the conference had a mission of not only supporting feminists already involved in the games industry, but to also show to those who don’t identify as feminists the importance of this philosophy and movement when doing this type of work. As such, discussions of what feminism is, and its significance to the creation of interactive media were at the forefront of many conversations over the weekend.

Of particular interest was the apparent tension between different understandings of feminisms across the generations of conference attendees. The opening of the second day saw an inspiring reminder that while yes, differences exist, intergenerational dialogue on experiences with sexism and workplace discrimination are integral to maintaining sustainability of this relatively small community. Read more

Posted on June 5, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Pop Culture Leave a comment

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