Ottawa Community Happenings this week

There are 4 interesting events happening in Ottawa this week that highlight women's rights issues. Hope to see you there!

1.Clothesline Project. SUNDAY May 30, 11 -4

--Minto Park (Elgin and Gilmour)

--Silent No More! We’re hanging out our dirty laundry!

Women and children are breaking the silence about the violence they've experienced by painting messages on T-shirts and displaying them!

2. Marche Amun: Justice for Indigenous Women and Children. Dinner & Talk. MONDAY May 31, 7pm

--Odawa Friendship Centre, 12 Stirling Ave.

--for more info: http://www.ipsmo.org/

3. Marche Amun: Justice for Indigenous Women and Children. Rally. TUESDAY June 1st, Noon

--Parliament Hill

--for more info: http://www.ipsmo.org/

4. Say NO to Violence Against Women (UNIFEM). WEDNESDAY June 2nd, 7-9,

--Parliament Hill, Room # 308 , West Block

--interactive discussion with a panel of activists on the issue of eradication the of violence against women and girls

--For further details and to RSVP, http://www.unifemcanada.org/

"Pro-choice supporters make presence felt at the National March for Life"

So, our small pro-choice minority got some coverage in the Xtra!

Here is the link:

http://www.xtra.ca/public/Ottawa/Prochoice_supporters_make_presence_felt_at_the_National_March_for_Life-8657.aspx

But what a small presence it was. I talked to quite a few people about it and everyone was surprised that we were in such small numbers.

The majority of people here (in Ottawa, Canada) are pro-choice, they said (I think so too!). Then why weren't we able to mobilize more people to oppose the atrocious 'march for life'?

I think it has to do with our really minimal conception of citizenship which is confined simply to voting ever few years. We just assume that every right that we have will stay undisputed and that we are powerless to change anything.

The sad part is that the extreme religious Right-wing ideology is rising, and unless we continue to provide opposition, we should get ready for a Canada with marginal rights for women and widespread social injustice.

As some of you may know, May 13th hosted yet another kerfuffle of PRO LIFE craziness! The march was quite strong but keep in mind that many kids from local catholic schools get a school trip out of this, the Church has A LOT of money to spend to make it seem like they represent the majority and people were bused in from all over the province. The arguments of the right are completely non factual and full of bigotry & sexism. They kept mentioning the DIGNITY OF LIFE! How hypocritical! Have they forgotten about colonialism, residential schools, homophobia, the powerlessness of womyn within the church and the numerous sex scandals of late?! Also, another thing they kept mentioning is how many ''children'' have been aborted. Well, how many kids live in poverty, how many kids are stuck in the system being shipped from foster home to foster home, how many kids are runaways, how many kids are belittled by their parents who didn't want a child but had one anyway because the church said they had no other choice, how many kids will never know their father because he jumped ship, etc?

The Church, if it wants to survive, must change and admit it faults. It's needs open dialogue and REAL christian love and acceptance of all human beings regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation...I have a feeling that Jesus is quite disappointed in what has been and is being done in the name of his teachings.

Finally, keep in mind that the Church actually doesn't have an official teaching as to when a fetus becomes a person. Also, God gave us free will didn't He?

It is important to note that most people do not know the full stories behind abortion. Every woman has her own story and different circumstances. That is why we are called PRO CHOICE because it is about choice. After all we do live in a DEMOCRACY! Well for now we do but it is a slippery slope! We need to be aware of what goes on behind closed doors with the powers that be including all governments (especially our current MINORITY tories), the religious right, and big corporations. This is not a black and white issue and I feel that if people were better informed, they would also realize this.

http://www.catholicsforchoice.ca/

I was raised as a Catholic and the primary reason I am not much of a practicing one is because of the hypocricies and atrocities comited by this institution over the centuries. When I ask my dad how he can reconcile his open minded beliefs with the stupidity of the Church and still attend mass, he always says the he puts his faith in God and not the institution. Many and most Catholics these days do not go to church, do not know the true significance of the rituals and rites and do not practice what they preach. Should this not be a wake up call that something needs to change?

Shanti, paix, peace

ARCC Petition: Include funding for Family Planning and Safe Abortion in Canada's G8 Maternal/Child Health Initiative

As the host country of the G8 Summit on June 25/26, 2010 in Huntsville Ontario, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his governing Conservative Party of Canada have chosen to champion an initiative to improve maternal and child health in developing countries.

However, this admirable initiative has become deeply mired in the Conservatives' anti-choice ideology. The government announced on April 26 that they will not fund safe abortion services "under any circumstances" in developing countries. Although they were forced to back down from their earlier position that family planning and contraception would also be excluded from the initiative, there is still no firm commitment to fund family planning - only a vague promise to "consider" it, and to "not close doors against any options, including contraception."

Please sign the following petition to call upon Parliament to include funding for safe abortion and family planning/ contraception in Canada's G8 maternal/child health initiative.

Please sign our petition to Parliament.

Thank you!

Joyce Arthur, Coordinator
Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC)
Vancouver, BC

Amnesty International's Gender Rights Network Presents:

BBQ for Justice Fundraiser

**Friday, May 14, 5:30 - 8:00 pm

**Amnesty International House - 312 Laurier Avenue East

Join Amnesty International’s Ottawa Gender Rights Network for a BBQ for Justice Fundraiser! Come enjoy our vegetarian-friendly BBQ.

Stay to watch a short film on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone.

Proceeds from this event will help support the Gender Rights Network's activities.

The Gender Rights Network – Ottawa (GRN - Ottawa) is a local Amnesty International group engaged in campaigning and community education activities to raise awareness about gender-based human rights violations. Since November 2009 the GRN – Ottawa has organized events around issues of violence against women and girls, letter writing actions on laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation, and have organized public actions in Ottawa to show solidarity for women’s human rights defenders.

To learn more about Amnesty's work on Women’s Human Rights visit www.amnesty.ca/women

"Chicken Hips" by Catherine Pigott

For the summer months, we'll be replacing our bi-weekly meetings with reading group sessions. We want everyone to feel welcome to attend these informal gatherings to discuss short readings. We'll be meeting up at 2:00pm, Sunday, 23rd May, at Dundonald Park (Somerset St W) if the weather is nice, or same time at Raw Sugar Cafe (Somerset St W) if the weather doesn't accommodate sitting outside.

Here's the first reading, titled "Chicken Hips" by Catherine Pigott:

The women of the household clucked disapprovingly when they saw me. It was the first time I had worn African clothes since my arrival in tiny, dusty Gambia, and evidently they were not impressed. They adjusted my head-tie and pulled my lappa, the ankle-length fabric I had wrapped around myself, even tighter, “You’re too thin,” one of them pronounced. “It’s no good.” They nicknamed me “Chicken-Hips.”

I marveled at this accolade, for I had never been called thin in my life. It was something I longed for. I would have been flattered if those ample-bosomed women hadn’t looked so distressed. It was obvious I fell short of their ideal of beauty.

I had dressed up for a very special occasion –the baptism of a son. The women heaped rice into tin basins the size of laundry tubs, shaping it into mounds with their hands. Five of us sat around one basin, thrusting our fingers into the scalding food. These women ate with such relish, such joy. They pressed the rice into balls in their fists, squeezing until the bright red palm oil ran down their forearms and dripped off their elbows.

I tried desperately, but I could not eat enough to please them. It was hard for me to explain that I come from a culture in which it was almost unseemly for a woman to eat too heartily. It was considered unattractive. It was even harder to explain that to me thin is beautiful, and in my country we deny ourselves food in pursuit of perfect slenderness.

That night, everyone danced to welcome the baby. Women swiveled their broad hips, and used their hands to emphasize the roundness of their bodies. One needed to be round and wide to make the dance beautiful. There was no place for thinness here. It made people sad. It reminded them of things they wanted to forget, such as poverty, drought and starvation. You never knew when the rice was going to run out.

I began to believe that Africa’s image of the perfect female body was far more realistic than the long-legged leanness I had been conditioned to admire. There, it is beautiful – not shameful – to carry weight on the hips and thighs, to have a round stomach and heavy, swinging breasts. Women do not battle the bulge, they celebrate it. A body is not something to be tamed and molded.

The friends who had christened me Chicken-Hips made it their mission to fatten me up. It wasn’t long before a diet of rice and rich, oily stew twice a day began to change me. Every month, the women would take a stick and measure my backside, noting with pleasure its gradual expansion. “Oh Catherine, your buttocks are getting nice now!” they would say.

What was extraordinary was that I, too, believed I was becoming beautiful. There was no sense of panic, no shame, no guilt-ridden resolves to go on the miracle grape-and-water diet. One day, I tied my lappa tight across my hips and went to the market to buy beer for a wedding. I carried the crate of bottles home on my head, swinging my hips slowly as I walked. I felt transformed.

In Gambia, people don’t use words such as “cheating,” “naughty or “guilty” when they talk about eating. The language of sin is not applied to food. Fat is desirable. It holds beneficial meaning of abundance, fertility and health.

My perception of beauty altered as my body did. The European tourists on the beach began to look strange and skeletal rather than “slim.” They had no hips. They seemed devoid of shape and substance. Women I once would have envied appeared fragile and even ugly. The ideal they represented no longer made sense.

After a year, I came home. I preached my new way of seeing to anyone who would listen. I wanted to cling to the liberating belief that losing weight had nothing to do with self-love.

Family members kindly started suggesting that I might look and feel better if I slimmed down a little. They encouraged me to join an exercise club. I wandered around the malls in a dislocated daze.

I felt uncomfortable try on clothes that hung so eloquently on the mannequins. I began hearing old voices inside my head: plaid makes you look fat… you’re too short for that style…vertical stripes are more slimming… wear black”. I joined the club. Just a few weeks after I had warn a lappa and scooped up rice with my hands, I was climbing into pink leotards and aerobics shoes. The instructor told me that I had to set fitness goals and “weigh in” after my work outs. There were mirrors on the walls and I could see women watching themselves. I sensed that even the loveliest among them felt they were somehow flawed. As their aerobics instructor barked out commands for arm lifts and leg lifts, I pictured Gambian women pounding millets and dancing in a circle with their arms raised high. I do not mean to romanticize their rock-hard lives, but we were hardly to be envied as we ran like fools between two walls to the tiresome beats of synthesized music.

We were a room full of women striving to reshape ourselves into some kind of pubertal ideal. I reverted to my natural stage: one of yearning to be slimmer and most fit that I was. My freedom had been temporary. I was home, where fat is feared and despised. It was time to exert control over my body and my life. I dreaded the thought of people saying “she’s let herself go.” If it returned to Africa I am sure the women will shake their heads in bewildered dismay. Even now I sometimes catch my reflection in a window and there voices come back to me. “Yo! Chicken-Hips!”

Ladyfest Ottawa Tarts N' Crafts - Sat May 8

In honour of Mother’s Day, Ladyfest Ottawa is donating $500 of the proceeds to Mothercraft Ottawa’s Birth and Parent Companion Program. The remainder of the profits go to fund events supporting women in the arts throughout the year.

Tarts n’ Crafts
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Jack Purcell Community Centre
10:00 am to 5:00 pm
$2 admission

Ladyfest Ottawa (LFO) is a non-profit, primarily women-organised music and arts festival that is open to everyone.

Ladyfest Ottawa is a volunteer-driven organisation that showcases women’s artistic expression and shares ideas through music, performance, film and video, exhibitions, panels and workshops.

Ladyfest Ottawa is part of a tradition of grassroots-organised festivals showcasing the talents of women artists... Ladyfest Ottawa is an inclusive, feminist organisation. We feel that providing a venue for women artists counters the obstacles and discrimination that women often face, including sexism, homophobia and racism. We also try to address these issues in our workshops, along with encouraging a D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself), hands-on approach to skill sharing. We believe that political action can be fun and creative!

We are also committed to building communities, collaborations and conversations among women in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. We are proud to showcase local artists.

Ultimately, we hope Ladyfest Ottawa inspires women everywhere to organise themselves and create similar spaces that allow women’s creative works to be seen and heard.

the deception continues: 14 Canadian Women's Rights Groups Defunded

As if the whole anti-abortion speak wasn't enough to incite your feminist fire, we've got news today about 14 women's rights groups in Canada who have been defunded in the last 2 weeks, including Match International, who has been getting regular funding for decades.

Despite the denial from the conservatives, one has no choice but to make the connection between these funding cuts (to organizations that openly disagree with the government's practices) and the party's larger ideological leanings.

How can we have an accountable, democratic government if organizations who are critical of it get their funding axed? How can we stand idly by while our civil society gets weakened? What can we do?

Well, I for one am not staying silent on the issue. It's not even 'just' about abortion. This is the current MINORITY government poisoning Canada with extreme Right-wing ideology. And I'm not taking it. Join me!!!

The groups include:

1. Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW)

2. CERA (Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation);

3. Conseil d'intervention pour l'accès des femmes au travail (around for 25 years).

4. New Brunswick Pay Equity Coalition,

5. le Réseau des Tables régionales de groupes de femmes du Québec

6. Alberta Network of Immigrant Women

7. Centre de documentation sur l'éducation des adultes et la condition feminine

8. Association féminine d'éducation et d'action sociale (AFEAS)

9. Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH) (a 75-member coalition primarily of first stage emergency shelters for abused women.)

"Your silence will not protect you".--Audre Lorde

Voici le reportage de Radio-Canada:

Condition féminine: L'opposition dénonce une culture d'intimidation

Check out the Globe and Mail article.

for a critical look on Canada's international efforts on Women's rights, see

'Politicizing, Undermining Gender Equality' in today's Embassy

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/803859--aid-groups-advised-to-shut-the-f-up-on-abortion?bn=1

"Ruth’s remarks, intended more as friendly advice than a warning, were met with gasps of disbelief and even anger among the approximately 80 aid representatives who converged on Parliament Hill to condemn what they see as a gathering storm against women’s rights in Canadian aid policy"

Now that you are done gathering your jaw from the floor, let's try to figure this out because I'm not sure about anyone else out there but I was never given any friendly advice containing the phrase shut the fuck up! I believe this is a threat. Keep quiet little people or you will force the PM to change the laws and it will be all your fault.

Clearly we should all play nice for the G8 G20 summit because clearly these behind closed door meetings between the powers that be have nothing but our own interests at heart. Even if we just want to look at things from a purely economical point of view, giving access to free abortions for womyn who CHOOSE it can save a huge monetary burden on society. Someone has to take care of these children and for whatever reasons, sometimes a woman is not capable of taking care of a child in all its many facets.

The other thing that I completely disagree with in this article is the statement saying that in Canada, womyn have free and accessible abortion! Well I can tell you that here in Ottawa, you will always find some slightly odd looking, holier than though protesters during clinic days. This to me seems like a deterant to access, no one wants to be harangued and bastardized by right wing Christians and the like before going into a clinic.

Keep in mind that you always have to look for all the facts. The right wing pro life people do not tell you the truth about abortion. They will always distort the facts and use guilt as a weapon. No woman should have to justify her decision in this matter to strangers. By telling us to keep quiet, I believe Senator Nancy Ruth is causing more ill than good. In fact, I don't think we would have women senators if it wasn't for the fact that our great grand-mothers, grand-mothers, mothers and their allies made some noise!!!

En solidarité,
Marie-Michèle Chezzi