josey ross

Steubenville: Not a Bug in the System

by Josey Ross

For a lot of people, the Steubenville rape case appears to be the first time they’ve really thought about rape, rapists, and rape survivors. This is challenging a lot of people’s Law and Order: SVU view of a rapist as an evil stranger in the park, someone we can point to as a bad guy, someone we can confidently assert we don’t know, and we wouldn’t know. Oh, my boyfriend/brother/teacher/friend would never do that. He’s a good guy.

These two young men’s friends are still saying that, still coming up with excuses. They are threatening the victim with death (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/18/two-girls-charged-with-threatening-steubenville-rape-victim/). They are crying over the halted futures of these bright stars.

Nobody in the mainstream media seems to be crying for this brave 16-year-old girl who has just had her life destroyed. That is what rape does; it destroys lives. It breaks people. It shatters your ability to trust others and, more tragically, to trust yourself. It forever strips that piece of you that naively believes in the concept of “safety”.

None of this is coincidence. The wretched events of Steubenville are not an aberration. They are not a culmination of things gone wrong. They are a system working as it should.

This system teaches young men that women are theirs for the taking, that women incapable of consent are not only ripe for violation but have brought it upon themselves. It teaches that rape doesn’t even require concealment, but that you can celebrate and joke about it across social media platforms.

And this system teaches young women to hew to a system of male dominance. If going to a party with your friends is excuse enough for rape and mass humiliation, what the hell happens to those who stand up to the patriarchal system? What happens to those who say: “I deserve to walk without looking over my shoulder” or “I deserve to take up space”?

We’re in the 21st century and we are still teaching young men that women are less than human. We’re in the 21st century and we are still ensuring that women who forget that, who dare to think they deserve safety and opportunity, are put in their place, whether subtly or violently.

The events of Steubenville are not a bug in the system, they are a feature of it.

Posted on March 20, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism 1 Comment

Spotlight on Jennifer Breakspear – Options for Sexual Health

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Jennifer Breakspear

by Josey Ross

As a university student I joined the board of Options for Sexual Health—formerly Planned Parenthood of BC. I wanted to be giving my time and energy to a sex-positive organization that provides judgment-free sexual health care to anyone who accesses it. I have also accessed services in a professional capacity as an anti-violence worker and have been blown away by not just the level of knowledge on the Sex Sense line but the warmth, compassion and lack of judgment.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jennifer Breakspear since she was named the Executive Director of Opt last May, but I wanted to get to know her a little better, and to highlight the excellent work that both she and the organization are doing.

Can you briefly (or not so briefly) describe your journey to Opt?

It’s been a windy career path that led to my arrival at Opt. My resume includes my early days as a cook, a paramedic, a union organizer, a federal public servant and an academic. Most recently I’ve been working full-time in non-profit management. However, one constant in both my work life and my personal life has been a commitment to making a difference. It was that commitment that led to my start in the non-profit sector.

I was a volunteer member of the Board of Director of Vancouver’s queer community centre when through a series of events the Executive Director position was vacant and I decided to resign from the Board and compete for the position. When I successfully landed the job I stepped into a huge challenge to rebrand the centre (from The Centre to QMUNITY), shift the organization from deficits to financial stability and establish QMUNITY as a central point of engagement for the Vancouver queer communities. The following four years were a roller coaster of growth, learning, successes, and challenges. By the time I learned about the Opt opportunity I had achieved many things that I had set out to at QMUNITY and was ready for my next career challenge.

As a queer young(ish) person myself, I was really excited when you were named the new Executive Director of Opt. One of the immediate changes I noticed you’ve implemented was gender-neutral bathrooms at the AGM. What other changes do you have in the works to make Opt even more queer-friendly?

This past fall we implemented a Dignity and Respect Policy which explicitly states “Options for Sexual Health (Opt) is committed to providing a non-judgmental environment which upholds the dignity and respect of the individual and which supports every individual’s right to work, volunteer, learn and access services free from harassment, intimidation and bullying. Opt recognizes the right of every individual to such an environment and expects all members of the Opt community to fulfill their responsibilities in this regard.” We used the roll-out of the policy to have widespread discussion and education about how we can best serve all British Columbians of all ages, all genders and all orientations. The staff and volunteers at Opt want to be truly inclusive and supportive of the sexual and reproductive health care needs of all our clients and we are working to ensure that all our staff have the education and awareness necessary do so. Read more

Posted on February 6, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, LGBT Leave a comment

Top Posts of 2012

fireworksAs mentioned earlier, I’m away this week so just have a few short posts & videos going up, but if you’re bored and looking for a longer read, maybe check out one of our top posts from the past year:

  1. The Ups and Downs of Being a Feminist on Pinterest – Turns out you can carve out feminist spaces on Pinterest. Here are the pros and cons you should know going in.
  2. Geek Girl Con 2012 on Game of Thrones - I recap a Geek Girl Con panel that addressed the question: “Is Game of Thrones sexist?”
  3. Halloween 2012: Options Other Than the “Sexy ___” Costume – This year’s Halloween post includes five creative costume ideas to help feminists looking for alternatives to the “Sexy (insert noun here)” costumes in stores.
  4. Feminism, Beyond and Within: A Review of Brave – Jessica Mason McFadden talks about how the movie Brave depicts mother-daughter relationships.
  5. Sex-Selective Abortion Isn’t a “Gotcha” for Feminists – Sex-selective abortion is the latest issue anti-choicers are trying to use as a wedge to pass legislation restricting abortion in Canada and the US. This article puts the issue in perspective.
  6. New Twitter Guide for Feminists – Updated guide to the must-follow accounts and hashtags for feminists on Twitter.
  7. Feminism F.A.Q.s: What Have Women Been Told They Can’t Do? – I launched my Feminism F.A.Q.s video series this year and this video, on what women have been told they can’t do through history, was far and away the most popular.
  8. 5 Signs You’re Arguing with an Incognito Anti-Choicer – Josey Ross deconstructs the most popular anti-choice rhetoric.
  9. Violence Sells? Time to Say “Enough” To Twisted Advertisers – Working with Battered Women’s Support Services (Vancouver) back in April, we shared a week-long series of posts by Joanna Chiu on media representations of violence against women. This post on violence against women in advertising was the most popular.
  10. Buying Presents for Other People’s Children: Actually Not Super Difficult – Jessica Critcher suggests some more gender-neutral options for people buying toys for others’ children.

 

Posted on December 24, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism Leave a comment

Gender Focus Reads: Women Make Noise: Girl Bands from Motown to the Modern

by Josey Ross

Writing about Women Make Noise: Girl Bands from Motown to the Modern, edited by Julia Downes,  is tricky. On the one hand, it’s a very good feminist history—inspiring, frustrating and exhaustive. On the other, it occasionally veers into territory too academic for pleasure reading and its commitment to shining the light on obscure girl bands can feel like a bit of a slog.

Starting with all-woman bands playing American Old-Time and Country music in the 1920s-1940s, going through girl bands of the ‘50s and ‘60s up through punk, post-punk, queercore, riot grrl and finishing up with Pussy Riot the authors paint a picture of the challenge girl groups face(d) in a very male-dominated industry, as well as the ways that women subverted gendered expectations and norms.

From the Ronettes of the ’60s navigating race and gender to ‘70s punk bad Ova opening a community music studio in order to “make music and music-making an accessible, demystified activity available to women as an empowering tool for social change” (p.120) to the Rock Girl Camps of the 21st century Women Make Noise provides a forgotten history of the intersections of music and activism.

Tales of race riots, intimidation and abuse by male music fans and management, and inspiring moments of in-your-face activism provide fascinating background to some of your favourite bands (and many you’ve never heard of). The greatest strength of Women Make Noise is that many of the contributors were themselves part of the bands they’re chronicling. These women offer up inspiring, funny and enraging stories of being radical activists and prolific musicians in a world that worked constantly to push them down.

This is not a book for a casual music fan, it’s a book for lovers of music who want a deeper, richer history; for those who want to explore bands and feminism and the tiny and huge revolutions that women created by picking up guitars, learning how to care for and fix their own equipment, and being unapologetic in their demands to be taken seriously as musicians.

 

Posted on December 4, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture 1 Comment

Gender Focus Panel: On Reclaiming Negative Words

I was reading one of my favourite blogs, GOOD, the other day and there was an article on “How to Reclaim a Dirty Name”, which particularly focused on the word “slut”. Here’s an excerpt from the intro:

Following the brouhaha in February when Rush Limbaugh called university student Sandra Fluke a ‘slut’ for arguing before Congress in favor of a private mandate for contraception coverage, a handful of campaigns have sprung up leveraging the epithet to further their cause. It’s breathing new life into the decades-long feminist movement to repurpose the word ‘slut’ from a shaming slur into a symbol of sexual choice.

The article listed five steps for reclaiming a negative term (say it first, brace for backlash, embrace the stigma, make it mainstream, take action), implying that it’s possible to reclaim any word no matter its history or how degrading it has come to be. Now reclaiming the word “slut” has been hotly contested by feminists, which the article does acknowledge, and I admit I understand both sides of that particular argument. On the other hand, I would argue that a term like “queer” is an example of successful work reclamation. So I wondered what others thought: is it possible to reclaim any dirty/negative/stigmatized word we want? Are there cases where it’s okay but only if guidelines for use are observed?

Here’s what some Gender Focus contributors had to say: Read more

Posted on July 25, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Politics, Pop Culture 1 Comment

On What it Means to be a Woman in this Culture

Woman Restroom symbolby Josey Ross

In my teenage years it was a common bonding experience to get together with girlfriends to compare the ways we had been harassed and even assaulted by strange men. We would laugh at tales of men twice our age following us on multiple trains in a foreign country, of men grabbing our vulvas in clubs, of male “friends” “jokingly” grabbing our tits*.

And I remember saying, time and again, “well, that’s just part of being female in this culture.” Not with anger, not with sadness, not even with resignation. Simply a statement of fact. The sky is blue. To be woman is to be routinely harassed and assaulted.

Told, as a teenager, the statistic that one in three women experience sexualized violence I scoffed: “Well, sure. I mean, if you’re going to count being groped or harassed, then yeah. But come on!” I, future anti-violence worker, champion of consent, dismissed the statistic because it was so normalized to me that the reality of being woman involves being groped and harassed. This violence was so routine it simply didn’t register on the scale for me.

And now, when I have these conversations with others, when I present the statistic that one in three women experience sexualized violence I hear, “Well, sure, but it depends how you’re counting it. I mean, if you count groping and harassment…”

Think about how tragic that statement is. We have agreed culturally that women must bear a certain amount of harassment and assault before it’s actually counted as violence. And the casual, daily violence we women face on the streets, in the clubs, on the bus, that is not part of that 1 in 3 statistic.

But my feeling is that if we were to truly count harassment and groping as sexualized violence we would find 99.95% of women have experienced sexualized violence.

*A small survey of experiences I had had by the time I turned 18.

(photo in public domain via Wikipedia Project)

Posted on May 20, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture 8 Comments

Faces of Courage: Stories of Change

by Josey Ross

I have done anti-violence work for three years now, first doing education and outreach for college-aged people of all genders, then working in a transition house for women and children fleeing abusive situations, and now as a Victim Support Worker, working with (mostly) women who have experienced family and/or sexualized violence.

Few things bring conversation with a new acquaintance to a halt like my answer to “so, what do you do for a living?” Inevitably there is awkward silence. As a culture, we don’t talk about violence against women outside of hyperbolic and reductionist accounts like those seen on Law and Order: SVU (a show that single-handedly undoes the myth-busting work I spent two years of my life doing). We don’t like talking about it. Talking about it brings it out of the shadows of what happens to other people, and into the reality that it is perpetrated against ourselves, our sisters, lovers and friends, and that it is often perpetrated by those closest to us. That is an uncomfortable reality.

After the looong uncomfortable silence, I always hear this: “wow, that must be so depressing!”

It’s hard. It is very hard work. But it is hugely inspiring and optimistic work. I am daily blown away by the strength and resilience of the women I work with, of the wisdom they have gathered and used as they keep themselves and their children safe in realities most of us cannot even imagine. And of the immense courage it takes to reach out for help, knowing that leaving is often the most dangerous period in a woman’s life.

I try to celebrate that strength, courage and wisdom with the women that I work with. In a culture that hides violence against women, and still implicitly holds that it is women’s responsibility to not be victimized rather than their perpetrators responsibility not to victimize, celebrating survival is an act of resistance.

It is for this reason that I am so excited by the Faces of Courage: Stories of Change project that Surrey Women’s Centre has put together for National Victims of Crime Awareness Week. Each day the website features a brave, beautiful woman’s story of survival and healing.

Please take a minute to celebrate and resist, by reading and sharing these amazing stories of survival and transformation.

Posted on April 26, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism Leave a comment
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