Women's Independence Network

Jacob Says Goodbye to (Some) Airbrushing...and vote for us!!!

2010-10-08T12:52:00.005-04:00

A quick hit today: Jacob, one of Canada's clothing retailers, has adopted a new company policy against some forms of re-touching. Ad developpers will still airbrush some models to even out skin tone and/or remove tattoos, but Jacob has taken a stance against re-touching to alter body size or shape.

A good move, Jacob! Thanks for speaking out against some of the near-impossible beauty standards women face today - standards that WIN wants to combat, so make sure to vote for us!

Big win for sex workers in Ontario!

2010-09-29T12:17:00.002-04:00

The Superior Court of Ontario has declared Canada's prostitution laws unconstititional!

Prostitution is technically legal in Canada, but there are so many barriers to being able to legally sell sex that it might as well not be. Prostitutes and their clients can't "communicate for the purposes of prostitution," can't work together in a house of prostitution/brothel/bawdyhouse, and can't make a living off their wages from sex work.

What this means is that prostitution is legal, but there is essentially no way to actually successfully initiate and enact a money-for-sex transaction. There is no way to obtain a business license for a sex house or sex agency (which confines the industry to the black market); prostitution can not be a person's primary "job" (which means that unemployed or irregularly employed persons who are most likely to need the money are the same individuals who can't legally acquire it that way) and, perhaps the most ridiculous of the prohibitions, can't be initiated from either the sex worker or the client (which basically translates into both prostitute and client needing ESP to conduct a legal sexual transaction). So even though prostitution is legal in Canada, there's no way to legally work as a prostitute or hire one. Prostitution might be "legal," but in practice, prostitution is ultimately against the law.

What the Ontario court has done will open the door for protections for prostitutes. Workers will be able to get hired or contracted to operate in a licensed brothel, keeping the industry out of the black market. Workers will be able to freely report abuse from a client without fear of prosecution from the police. Workers will be able to talk freely about what they do. Workers will be able to rely on prostitution as a source of income.

This is great news for sex workers in Ontario - let's see the rest of our country follow suit! Regardless of your feelings about the morality of prostitution, it's important to keep the industry safer for the men and women within it. Ensuring that workers have legal rights is a crucial first step.

Quick Hit: Worst Anti-Abortion Ad

2010-08-12T16:40:00.000-04:00

Via This Is Hysteria!, one of our followers:

The Worst Anti-Abortion Ad I Ever Saw

Check it out!

New law proposed to allow victims of abuse to leave

2010-08-12T09:06:00.006-04:00

There is a new law being proposed that would allow victims of abuse to break their leases early in order to flee their abusers. Normally, a tenant must give 60 days notice before leaving - and that's after the initial lease period has expired. Under the new law, an abuse victim would be allowed to break the lease early, giving only 28 days notice to their landlord in the form of a letter and proof of the abusive situation (ie. a letter from police stating that a domestic violence investigation is taking place, or a restraining order or peace bond).

Some are saying this still leaves the onus of responsibility on the victim. I think that is true in part, but I think this law gets much closer to a real solution than most. Rather than longer jail times, new procedures for police or what have you, this gives a victim of domestic violence a much greater chance of escaping the violence. Punishing the abuser will only get you so far, especially if they are only convicted on minor charges such as uttering threats or forcible confinement, for which the maximum penalty is 18 months imprisonment. There need to be more systems in place to help victims escape their situations; it's very difficult to launch a full criminal investigation, as it can be hard to prove that violence or abuse take place at all (especially in an "ungrateful woman just lying to get revenge!" society), so other avenues need to be available.

If passed, this law isn't going to change the world for victims of abuse. But it will give them more hope, and a greater opportunity, of escaping that abuse, and that's a big step in the right direction. We just have to make sure we keep walking.

Date rape drug test to hit store shelves

2010-07-21T09:36:00.012-04:00

Here is yet another product that puts the onus of responsibility for "date rape" (or just rape, if we're being honest) on the victim rather than the rapist. A new date rape drug test kit - which is already on sale in Quebec - will be available in pharmacies across Canada in the next few weeks. Women use the kit to test a drink they suspect may have been drugged by dropping a few drops of the drink onto a test sheet, which changes colour depending on whether the drink has been spiked and which commonly-used "date rape drug" is detected.

I have mixed feelings about this. First and foremost, if this product helps prevent women from being raped or assaulted - or worse - by alerting them to a spiked drink before they drink it, no one with a shred of humanity can argue with the fact that that is a good thing and the product has served its purpose.

However - and this is a big however - the date rape test kit is a superficial fix to a deeply rooted societal problem; it is the equivalent of using a band aid to cover a bullet wound. It will contain some of the bleeding for a little while, but the real threat to safety is still there.

In order to prevent the crime from happening, we need to address the root causes, and those root causes do not involve women not being careful with their drinks in bars or at parties. They involve, among other things, a society that still largely sees women as property and something to gain control over; that encourages a primitive ideal of masculinity with no room for variance from the norm; where, for some reason, the idea of consent seems to be hazy and difficult to navigate (tip : the only thing that means "yes" is a clear, emphatic YES); and, last but not least, that does not punish rapists for their actions, and instead rationalizes and explains them away as somehow being the fault of the victim.

To be clear, I'm not saying society is solely to blame for rape. Rapists must also be held responsible for their actions, and that just isn't happening. But I think to effect real change we need to work more towards a societal shift, towards a mindset devoid of victim-blaming, rape apologist attitudes. We will never be able to get rid of rapists altogether, just as we will never be able to get rid of murderers or thieves altogether, but we can do away with the attitudes that allow rapists to continue raping women with little or no consequences.

GET INVOLVED: Protesters Respond to Recent Sexual Assault Victim Being Turned Away from the Ottawa Hospital

2010-07-13T07:48:00.004-04:00

In case you are itching to get involved after the recent incident wherein a sexual assault victim was turned away from the Ottawa Hospital, there is more you can do.

Today, at noon, there is a rally at the Human Rights Monument to voice our collective outrage.

If you can and are so inclined, go and support the protest, which is imperative to have the government understand how unacceptable these recent events were.

UPDATE: Ottawa Hospital to start offering 24/7 treatment for sex assault survivors

2010-07-08T16:07:00.003-04:00

The Ottawa Hospital has reconfigured their staffing practices to ensure that a trained nurse will be available 24/7 to administer the collection of evidence and treatment of sexual assault survivors.

It sure didn't take long, yet they waited until after who knows how many sex assault survivors were either sent home to wait around for hours or days, or were sent to a hospital 2 hours away for treatment, before they did anything about this obvious problem with both the health care and justice systems.

I'm glad the issue appears to have been resolved, but it shouldn't have taken a bunch of media and public attention to make change. Hospital workers, and by extension those who run and manage hospitals, should be genuinely concerned for people's health and welfare. When a sexual assault survivor is brought to the hospital for treatment and the collection of evidence, there should be no long wait, no turning away, and absolutely no adding to the physical and emotional trauma that person has already endured.

I don't know what the stats are on survivors who have been turned away to either go to Renfrew or come back to the Civic later, but I do know that in the comments on the original story at the Ottawa Citizen website, several people said either they or someone they knew received the same kind of treatment as the woman this past weekend. And that wasn't even a long comment thread - can you imagine what the actual stats must be like?

This certainly was a victory for future survivors of sexual assault in Ottawa, but a bittersweet one. There should not have been a challenge to overcome in the first place.

Sexual Assault Survivors Deserve Better: Calling Out the Ottawa Hospital and Sun Media

2010-07-07T09:51:00.016-04:00

Here in Ottawa, in Ontario, and nationwide in Canada, we are used to waiting for certain hospital procedures. For some things, this is acceptable. I had a months-long wait time for my IUD consultation, for example, but that didn't bother me; I had enough birth control pills to last me in the meantime, and the IUD insertion wasn't a pressing matter that I needed handled right away.

But if I were sexually assaulted in my own community? I'd be looking for a snappy reaction. I would want to know that the evidence would be gathered in a timely, efficient manner, and that my case was being handled seriously.

Read this. Read it now, and ponder it, and then read it again. This is wrong. It is wrong for so many reasons.

It is wrong because this woman was denied access to a fundamental right: The right to make sure that police have the tools they need to press charges against those who have criminally wronged you. For those who are unaware, sexual assault evidence kits (also referred to as "rape kits") are a procedure for prosecuting sexual assault cases. They include both asking a series of open-ended questions and the collection of physical evidence. They are often crucial to properly prosecuting a sexual assault case. And sure, this woman may still be able to press charges; time will tell if the delays in her evidence collection negatively impacted the quality of said evidence. But particularly concerning the questioning portion of the kit, every second matters. The longer a victim of sexual assault has to wait, the harder it will be for her (or him) to remember what the assailant(s) looked like, what they sounded like, what they said, where they went, what time the events occurred.

It is wrong because this woman was denied this important service by her own community. Ottawa is a big city - with a population approaching one million, it is the fourth-largest city in Canada. Why was this woman forced to be sent away to a smaller community to handle the gathering of evidence for a crime that occurred in Ottawa's downtown core? A community where they would be less likely to recognize the street names, the areas? Again, every minute matters in a sexual assault case. Her only option, other than leaving the city, would have been to lie in bed, unbathed and waiting, for over a day.

It is wrong because it highlights a serious resource issue in our health care system. Shouldn't more nurses be trained to handle this? I spoke to Joan Hawkins yesterday, a coworker of mine and former employee of the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre (ORCC), and she said that there is nothing in the performance of a rape kit that meaningfully requires specialized training. It is something that involves the gathering of some physical evidence (evidence that any registered nurse should be able to gather anyway, such as checking for bruises and collecting DNA samples) and a script involving non-judgmental, open-ended questions. Shouldn't all nurses already be trained to be non-judgmental toward their patients? Shouldn't they all be trained how to properly phrase questions to better understand their patients' needs?

It is wrong because there is no back-up plan. I am flabbergasted as to how not a single worker was present at the Ottawa Hospital who could assist this young woman. What happened to troubleshooting? Is this the world we leave in - a world where a lack of resources means there are no other options available? I understand why specialized nurses exist who are trained in this area, but if none were present, I would damn well expect that someone is going to take care of me.

It is wrong because it is against policy. Police protocol dictates that this woman should have been seen within an hour. Where is the accountability? Whose responsibility is it to make sure hospitals are sufficiently resourced? Why is it that on Canada Day weekend - a holiday marked by heavy drinking and partying, and therefore, increases in hospital visits - the staff of the hospital was unprepared to meet the standards laid out by the City of Ottawa's Sexual Assault Protocol?

It is wrong because it has been improperly reported. The Sun referred to the procedure as "treatment" - this is incorrect. Collection of evidence is not treatment. Treatment could include physical or psychological therapy, for some women; it could include post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses and prescriptions for medications for others; it could include surgery or other restorative medical procedures for others; and for some victims, no treatment is requested or needed. Emotional and physical healing varies, and it takes time. Waiting a day for treatment could be entirely justified in some cases. But waiting a day for the collection of evidence? Never.

It is wrong because the hospital knows it's wrong, and because it is not a unique situation.

It is wrong because our community is underresourced, as a whole, to deal with sexual assault crimes.

It is wrong because this should not have happened, but it did, and it happens all too often.

Tell the Ottawa Hospital that this is unacceptable.

This Week...

2010-06-26T08:18:00.013-04:00

Gloria Steinem and Jessica Valenti continue to eloquently clarify feminism's tenets to those confused by recent politically-motivated appropriation.

The construction of virginity erases queer experience.

Into Fat Acceptance and Health At Every Size? Check out these two podcasts. Or you could just enjoy some writing on the matter.

Sexism got you down? Don't know where to turn? Feminist Hulk is sure to inspire!

*Bonus: this ain't recent but it sure is funny.

Poll says a majority of Canadians disagree with Harper's anti-abortion stance on the International Maternal Health Initiative

2010-06-24T11:30:00.002-04:00

Less than 2 months after the largest pro-life rally Ottawa has ever seen (according to the Toronto Star), a poll conducted by Ipsos Reid shows that approximately 56% of Canadians are against Harper's anti-abortion stance concerning the international maternal health initiative. The results were published just two days before Canada's initiative is to be presented at the G8 summit in Toronto.

Without more information it's a little hard to say what exactly this means. However, one thing that comes through loud and clear is that more than half of those surveyed realize that abortion is a necessary component of a comprehensive approach to improving maternal health. The WHO said as part of its Global Strategy on Reproductive Health in 2004,

As a preventable cause of maternal mortality and morbidity, unsafe abortion must be dealt with as part of the MDG on improving maternal health and other international development goals and targets.

Since the initiative's aim is to reduce maternal mortality and improve the lives and health of mothers and children in the world's poorest countries, Harper's decision to not provide funding or access to safe, legal abortion actually counters these goals. For one thing, women who are desperate enough will seek an abortion regardless of whether it's safe or legal - and the women who make up much of this demographic are those living in poverty with little or no other options available to them. According to the World Health Organization, a woman dies approximately every 8 minutes in third-world countries because of complications from unsafe abortions. Almost half of all women in third-world countries who seek abortions obtain them unsafely and/or illegally. The methods used include drinking turpentine, bleach, or tea made with manure, placing foreign bodies such as a stick, coat hanger, or chicken bone into the uterus, or jumping from the top of a flight of stairs or a building to induce a miscarriage (WHO stats).

While roughly 60% of all women who obtain unsafe abortions worldwide are between the ages of 15-24, many women already have children. So not only are the women themselves losing their lives, but tens of thousands of children are losing their mothers each year to unsafe abortions. Putting restrictions on abortion won't curb its incidence, either, as demonstrated by the WHO's stats on abortion. Abortions occur at a rate of 29 per 1000 women aged 15-44 in Africa, where abortion is illegal in most countries, whereas the rate is 28 per 1000 in Europe, where it is generally legal. The lowest abortion rates in the world are in countries where there are little or no legal restrictions.

This is something that anti-abortionists fail to recognize when railing against legalized and non-restricted abortion. If they really, truly cared about reducing the abortion rate, they would accept its being legal and accessible. Sadly, however, most anti-abortionists only see the issue in black and white: abortion means killing a baby, and that is wrong, end of story. There is no nuance or room for exceptions, including rape, incest, and complete lack of other options, which is the case for many women in third world countries. Come on; if women are willing to consume manure or risk killing themselves jumping off a building in order to self-abort an unplanned pregnancy, that speaks volumes about how many other options they have. Can you imagine being that desperate, in such a hopeless situation? Try it, and then try to justify the leader of a country with no restrictions on abortion telling you that they're not going to provide funding for you to have the same low-risk, probably life-saving procedure.

If Stephen Harper or Bev Oda truly cared about saving women's lives, they would not be preventing Canada from funding safe, legal abortions in third world countries. If they had an ounce of sense or ability to understand statistics, they would not be so dead-set against providing comprehensive maternal health care to the women in the world who absolutely need it the most.

Want to tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda why this plan is dangerous and goes against the wishes of a majority of Canadians? Contact them at Harper.S@parl.gc.ca and/or Oda.B@parl.gc.ca.

Welcome to the Women's Independence Network Blog!

2010-06-15T10:59:00.015-04:00

Welcome! We are the Women's Independence Network, an Ottawa-based, non-profit organization dedicated to raising women's rights issues to the public consciousness in and around the National Capital Region - and hopefully across Canada one day. We were initially inspired by the American organization the Younger Women's Task Force, and decided that we wanted to create a Canadian equivalent. Thus, the Women's Independence Network (WIN) was born.

Now, to get a few things out of the way. First: we are a feminist organization and we wear that label proudly. Before you go thinking that we hate men and want women to rule the world, we'd like to clear that up. Contrary to popular belief, feminists do not hate men. We are not seeking to create a new world order where women are all-powerful and men are our slaves. The purpose of our organization is to promote gender equality, create dialogue, and to change society's attitudes towards the contemporary women's movement.

One of the most often-heard arguments against modern feminism is that it isn't needed. However, gender equality is still surprisingly lacking, even in 21st Century Canada. This shouldn't be the case. It's been 91 years since all women in Canada were granted the vote (70 years in Quebec). It's been 41 years since life-saving abortion was legalized across Canada, and 22 years since the historic R. v. Morgentaler case, in which the provision that the pregnancy must be a threat to the woman's life or health was necessary in order for an abortion to be approved. Despite all this progress, we still have a mess of pay equality laws, which are not enforced universally across Canada; women are still seen as second-class citizens in the eyes of many; and Ottawa women's shelters are overcrowded and have to turn away a number of women every day. This is not to mention the pressure placed on women to be perfect, whether that refers to how they act, how they look, or even how they think, or that disordered eating is a widespread, serious issue for Canadian women. Women make up less than 20% of our federally elected politicians, despite making up slightly more than half the population in Canada, and too many media representations of women are, to say the least, unfavourable.

This isn't a pity party. This is a wake-up call to women and men in Ottawa that feminism is, in fact, still relevant and necessary. In Canada and around the world, a new generation of feminists is working to inspire change in the law and in the global consciousness. We're ready to take on Ottawa, and we hope you are, too.