As members of CKUT‘s feminist radio collective, my Venus co-hosts and I were asked to program a special set today on the show New Shit for International Women’s Day, on women musicians we love and who’ve inspired us. We ended up having a great time just playing records and chatting about women we admire, so I thought I’d post a link so you can hear the songs and stories we’ve been throwing down.

Click here to listen.

You’ll be hearing our heroes Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, Patti Smith, Wendy O. Williams, Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, Hole, Secret Trial Five, Mary J. Blige, Gina X, Heart, Las Grecas, and The Flying Lizards.

And that’s just the beginning… okay, that’s the whole hour. But as far as amazing women musicians go, they’re a drop in the bucket.

Our Venusian ancestors.

Writers and aspiring playwrights take note: NOW!, the by-youth for-youth sustainability organization, is hosting a national playwriting competition for youth. From the NOW! newsletter:

Are you an innovator passionate about the environment? Do you want a challenge? Do you love writing? Enter the Act NOW! National Playwriting Competition!

Who? Dreamers and change-makers (Ages 14-26, divided into junior and senior categories)
What? The Act NOW! Playwriting Competition! Write a short play on sustainability.
When? Deadline: March 31st 2010 (At the end of this month!)
Where? All across Canada.
Why? Make a difference and push your creative boundaries.

Plus, cash prizes ($500 for each winner), and the opportunity for your play to be performed all over Canada and filmed and aired by Sustainability TV, to an estimated audience of 10,000 people! Quality plays will be published in a free online sustainability play database for change-makers to ripple sustainability innovations.

Check out the NOW! website for more information and to enter.

Happy New Years, everyone!

I’ll never forget seeing the punk legend play at the annual New Year’s 24-hour poetry/performance marathon at a church on the Lower East Side, after taking her acoustic guitar out of the black garbage bag she was carrying it in.

Nothing says partytime to me like The Raincoats. Enjoy, everyone!

Today is December 6th, the anniversary of the murder of 14 young women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, by a man acting out of hatred of women and feminism. A lot has been said and written in the past week about the event; I have to admit at the moment I don’t feel up to a clear-headed and incisive journalistic analysis of violence against women, the importance of feminism, or the need to remember this day in history. Instead I want to offer two things: the names of the women killed. And Choeur Maha, the Montreal women’s choir, singing Warrior by the Wyrd Sisters. Sometimes a little peace and a little hope are all you can ask for.

Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz

For lyrics to the song, go here.

Wow. I’m a big fan of Terry O’Reilly’s radio show The Age of Persuasion and I watch more Mad Men than I like to admit, but every time I think I’m a savvy mediaphile who’s completely immune to shock tactics in the world of advertising, those zany ad execs prove me wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

Hit the Bitch is a Danish anti-violence-against-women campaign that works much like a video game where you’re supposed to, well, beat up a woman. Your mouse or webcam controls a big, hairy, manly arm that slaps and punches a very realistic avatar of a woman, complete with sound effects and bruises that appear on her face. Your “performance” is ranked on a scale that goes from PUSSY to GANGSTA (we’ll get to the racist implications in a second). I was not able to complete the game, because I must be a pussy (& proud to say it!) but according to the AdFreak researchers, who are more dedicated than me, when you’ve successfully reduced the woman to a tearful pulp the game calls you an idiot. Well, on behalf of all abused women worldwide, thanks a mill’.

Yeah, so I didn’t really want to include an image from the Hit the Bitch website, since I figure we see enough images of women being abused and victimized, so here instead are Thelma and Louise, who fought back. Enjoy!

The AdFreak piece already makes several strong points about the absurdity of the site (people who think it’s okay to commit violence against women will enjoy it, while people to whom it’s revolting won’t be able to look at it for more than a second; it makes violence against women into a game, which is not okay no matter what the message), and personally I tend to agree that doing something in the name of a cause I support doesn’t equal carte blanche. Plus and besides are there so few images of victimized and abused women in the world that we need to start making more of them? I’d be curious to know where other people stand on that, but before I open up the floor I want to comment on what to me is maybe the most disturbing aspect of this ad, which is the conflation of violence against women and what the makers seem to suggest is a “gangsta” or hip-hop lifestyle.

(more inside…)

One more thing to get excited about for the upcoming weekend: Angela Davis, activist, writer and professor, is speaking at McGill University this Thursday about the case of Oscar Grant, a young black man who was shot and killed by transit police in California on New Year’s Day 2009.

Aaaaand… Davis is going to be interviewed on my radio show earlier that day! Tune into Venus on CKUT 90.3 FM (you can listen online as well, just follow the directions on the website) around 1:30 this Thursday the 1st. This is a great opportunity to hear an activist icon being interviewed in a non-mainstream- media setting. You can bet you’ll hear questions and answers you wouldn’t get anywhere else.

An activist poster of Davis from the 1970s(?)

From the Media@McGill press release:

“Oscar Grant was a young Black man returning home by way of the Fruitvale BART station after celebrating the New Year. This was the only excuse the cop needed to end Grant’s life execution-style. Maybe Oscar was too loud, too proud, too Black. Maybe he was too calm during the taunts of the police. Or maybe it was for nothing at all.”

Coming only days before the inauguration of Barack Obama – as the world’s media was proclaiming the dawn of a new “post-racial America” – the case of Oscar Grant demonstrated the depth and complexity of the relationship between media, race and power.

Renowned human rights activist Angela Davis will reflect on this issue in a Media@McGill / Beaverbrook public lecture entitled “Media, Race and Power: The Case of Oscar Grant”.

Angela Davis is an American political activist and university professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Today, Davis continues to work for racial and gender equality, gay rights, and prison abolition and is a popular public speaker, nationally and internationally.

Thursday, October 1, 2009 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Room 132, Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec

My hometown is all abuzz with excitement for the upcoming Pop Montreal music festival, and I’m happy to say that with a lineup of some of the most impressive female performers around, it gets the Venus seal of approval. Full schedule is available on the website, but I’m giving some of my top recommendations here - check the website for times and locations. One cool thing is that if you can’t afford the often-steep ticket prices for some of the bigger names, you can see many of the artists speaking on panels, keynotes, and symposia for free, and if you bring a tiny mp3 player with you and squint it’s like getting a backstage pass to their show.

The Heavy Hitters
Diamanda Galas: HIV/AIDS activist and OG (original goth) with a 3.5-octave range, not only is she performing but she’s giving a keynote address on the relationship between art and epidemics.
Buffy Ste. Marie: Whether she’s breaking your heart with her voice or breastfeeding her baby on Sesame Street, the iconic singer/songwriter is not to be missed.
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks: Despite claiming to hate most punk rock, Lydia Lunch is about the punkest lady ever. It seems unbelievable that her 1970s band is coming together again to play a show with Montreal art punks AIDS Wolf and Duchess Says, but I guess fairy godmothers really do exist.
Fever Ray: The female half of Swedish band The Knife (remember that song that you danced to for all of Summer 2007?) is known for the visual feastiness of her live shows, as if her haunting songs aren’t enough on their own. Check out the video for When I Grow Up from her self-titled 2009 album.

Under The Radar (but not for long)
(more inside…)

Here’s something you Toronto readers may want to check out. It’s an art opening and also a screening of a film made by Jessica Yee, activist, community organizer, and Shameless blogger and contributor.

The Centre for Women’s Studies in Education and The Native Youth Sexual Health Network present:

Youth Resisting Colonialism and Rebuilding Pathways to Hope - A Film Screening and Art Exhibition

Monday, September 21st, 2009
OISE Building, 252 Bloor St. W., Room 2-212
6 pm to 9 pm (film @ 7 pm)

This event exhibits the work of youth reflecting their resistance to violence and colonialism through artistic expression.

The exhibit will be followed by a screening of Building a Highway of Hope, a documentary filmed and directed by Indigenous feminist activist Jessica Yee about the numerous disappearances and murders of Aboriginal women along Highway 16 in British Columbia, followed by a panel discussion featuring Jessica Yee of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, Charlene Catchpole, Executive Director of the North York Women’s Shelter, and Tannis Nielsen, Artist and Youth Program Coordinator, Native Canadian Centre of Toronto.

The exhibition will continue until October 2, 2009.

Light refreshments will be served. Venue is wheelchair accessible.
For more information contact the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education at: 416-978-2080 or cwse@oise.utoronto.ca