• • Event Listings

  Youth Week 2009!

  May 1, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  Today is the first day of Youth Week 2009, a festival of youth community engagement and creativity run by Youth Action Network in Toronto.

  This year’s theme is Art & Activism, and it kicks off tonight with Three Dollars an Hour - a night of radical music, poetry, burlesque and performances by the Asian Arts Freedom School and Zameen Shadbad, hosted by the Asian Arts Freedom School and Mayworks. Also tonight is the opening of Grounded - an exhibition of socially reflective artworks and performances by young people which runs till May 6, and unContact, a photography exhibition charting the evolution of Toronto graffiti culture.

  Check out the Youth Action Network’s website for a full schedule of events in Toronto and beyond. The festival runs from May 1-8.

• • Body Politics
  • Race and Racism

  Koodon’t

  April 8, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  I don’t know if these ads have been showing up in other cities in Canada, but Koodo Mobile’s ad campaigns are really starting to irk me.

  First of all, they ran that line of ads with fat-hating taglines like “Lose that chubby contract,” “Fat-free mobility is here” and “Say bye-bye to bill blubber,” along with pictures of people in exercise gear just in case we didn’t get the message.

  Their latest ads show people with huge mouths and glinting white teeth shouting the company’s slogans. Which would be one thing, except the people in these ads are disproportionately black.

  Is it just me, or do these caricatures bear a striking resemblance to the old cartoons that depicted black people as having enormous mouths and lips and dazzling white teeth? I have seen a few ads with white people in them too, but it looks suspiciously like someone tacked them onto the campaign as an after-thought. What also makes the preponderance of black people in this set of ads suspect is that Koodo’s previous campaign didn’t feature a single person of colour.

  The images become particularly troubling when you put them in the context of Koodo’s purposefully ugly aesthetic. They used people in brightly coloured retro workout gear for the first set of ads, and the people featured in this set all have traditionally unsexy qualities: huge glasses, ginger hair, bad haircuts, braces.

  So what are we supposed to make of those afro’d black folks in bad sweaters? Is it just equal-opportunity geek-hating, or is Koodo taking their retro shtick too far?

• • Bibliothèque

  This is what oppression SOUNDS like call-out

  March 16, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  Today’s second literary announcement is for “This Is What Oppression SOUNDS Like” zine: “an underground zine for and by racialized and indigenous women to anonymously discuss the intersecting realities of race and gender in their lives.” It will be published in January, May and September.

  The zine is looking for submissions from racialized and indigenous girls, young women and women. The first submission deadline is April 15, 2009. Digital submissions can be sent to hawa_mire@yahoo.ca. Physical artwork may be submitted by mail to:
  859 Queens Ave.
  Victoria, BC
  Lekwungen Territory
  V8T 4v8

  When submitting, please note whether you consent to your piece being shown online as well as in print, and to the online version being opened up for comments.

• • Bibliothèque
  • Event Listings

  Pink Ink Zine and Zine Launch Call-Out

  March 16, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  I have two announcements this week for writers in the audience. For clarity, I’ll split them into two posts.

  The first is that Toronto queer youth writing group Pink Ink is putting together a zine, and they’re looking for submissions from queer/trans/questioning Toronto-based writers aged 29 and under. They’re also looking for people to perform at their zine launch at The Gladstone in April.

  If you’ve never read in public before, this is a great place to start. And if you’re not interested in performing, this is still going to be an awesome event with dancing after the readings.

  Here’s what you need to know:

  Pink Ink is looking for queer youth who want to submit their writing and/or art (about any subject), and performers for the zine launch!
  It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to Pink Ink before. We’re still interested in having your work in our zine and/or having you perform at our zine launch at Granny Boots, the Gladstone Hotel’s FREE/early evening queer-positive party on Wednesday April 22nd from 7:30-11pm. The event is ALL AGES.

  We are accepting submissions from queer, trans and questioning youth (14-29 years old). The deadline for submission is Sunday April 5, 2009.
  Please send all submissions or inquiries to soypinkink@gmail.com or by mail to:
  SOY
  Attention: Pink Ink Zine Submissions
  333 Sherbourne St, 2nd Floor
  Toronto, ON
  M5A 2S5

  Pink Ink is a writing group for queer, trans, and questioning youth from around the Greater Toronto Area. It is facilitated by Karine Silverwoman who is an artist, counselor and community activist. She can be reached at ksilverwoman@hotmail.com.

  Pink Ink is a program through Supporting our Youth (SOY) www.soytoronto.org.
  

• • Body Politics

  Quick link: Anorexia

  March 11, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  There’s a really interesting article about anorexia in the Guardian today.

  I don’t think I’ve come across anything examining anorexia in any detail since I was in high school, when it was described to us in very different terms than this article explains it, as mainly about people (mostly girls) who just want to be thin. Writer Laurie Penny makes it clear it’s not as simple as that:

  “Anorexia has long been trivialised as a by-product of celebrity and fashion culture, and this media focus has sharpened since the death of two models in 2006. But the condition is actually far more than that: anorexia has been recorded since the 12th century as a psychotic strategy of self-control, which suggests that we have to look far beyond the pages of today’s women’s magazines for answers.”

  It’s mostly focused on the shortcomings of the British medical system when it comes to recognition and treatment, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the early stages tend to go undiagnosed in Canada too. More local resources are available at the National Eating Disorder Information Centre’s website.
  

• • All About Shameless
  • Event Listings

  International Women’s Day 2009

  March 5, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  International Women’s Day is this Saturday, March 7th!

  There’s a whole heap of events going on all over the world over the next few days, but if you’re in Toronto, and you only go to one, it should probably be the International Women’s Day rally, march and fair this Saturday:

  International Women’s Day Rally & March
  Rally 11am, march 1pm. OISE Auditorium, 252 Bloor Street W. Fair 1:30pm at Ryerson University, 55 Gould Street. www.iwdtoronto.org.

  And if you want to spread the word in your school/campus/office/blog, you should check out this awesome IWD promotional poster designed by activist studio The Public (co-founded by Shameless art director Sheila Sampath).

  

  (www.thepublicstudio.ca)

  The poster is creative commons, which means you can print as many copies as you want or add text to it. The Public will be tabling at the IWD rally on Saturday, so you can swing by and buy a screenprinted 8x18” version of the poster, or make your own stenciled t-shirt for free (BYO shirt).

  Download the poster here.

• • Race and Racism

  Black people in America held back by hip-hop and short shorts

  February 26, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  A few months ago I got a free digital subscription to Macleans. I don’t know why I keep reading it though, since my day is almost always worse for the experience.

  Today’s salient piece of racist nonsense, which unfortunately isn’t online yet but if it does surface on the website I’ll update this post with a link, is Andrew Potter’s column, “Sometimes a primate is just a primate, Reverend” in which he defends the New York Post’s dead chimp cartoon that sparked so much discussion last week.

  First of all, I just don’t buy the headline. I don’t believe that a political cartoonist would draw a chimp and use it to comment on the recent actions of the President, without knowing what he was doing. I don’t believe it never entered that cartoonists’ head that people were going to assume he’d drawn the President as a chimpanzee and filled him full of bullets. And the fact that he went ahead and did it anyway means that this primate is not just a primate.

  (more inside…)

• • Body Politics

  Layering up for…the beach?

  February 26, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  So, it’s not really beach season yet but if you were planning on picking up a new bikini for a winter getaway anytime soon, maybe you should go with one of these numbers instead.

  Or maybe not.

  WholesomeWear is “a modest line of clothing for ‘wherever’”. They’re launching with their swimwear (which looks suspiciously like the hideous grey tunics girls wore at my primary school until they scrapped the dated looking things in the early 90s), because “the need for modesty in swimwear is greatest.” Is it though, really? Is this honestly something we need in our lives?

  Of course, it’s only being marketed towards women, because “modesty” is not a word that ever gets associated with boys. No company would ever suggest that a man bearing his pecs on the beach is in any way unwholesome, but a woman showing a quarter-inch of skin means she’s down for anything.

  I also think this is an interesting piece of anti-sex backlash. Because no one, in any era, has ever worn this much clothing to go swimming. Even those funny 1920s bathing suits weren’t this wretchedly ugly.

• • All About Shameless
  • Shameless Behaviour

  Behind the masc

  February 18, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  Continuing with this week’s theme of Shameless people doing awesome things, I’m incredibly excited for the launch of Tuval Dinner‘s new blog, masc!

  masc is an alternative magazine for guys that aims to be a positive space for men to explore how masculinity affects their lives, examine stereotypes and talk about gender, sexuality and health. The first few posts are up already.

  It’s maybe a little odd to promote a magazine for men on the website of a magazine for girls and young women, but in many ways masc is committed to the same feminist goals as Shameless.

  (more inside…)

• • Bibliothèque

  Yes Means Yes: Q&A With Jill Filipovic

  February 17, 2009 • Cate Simpson

  This weekend I talked to Jill Filipovic, one of the contributors to Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Power & A World Without Rape, about her essay “Offensive Feminism: the conservative gender norms that perpetuate rape culture, and how feminists can fight back.” The interview was part of the Yes Means Yes virtual tour, which - to name a few - has stopped at Feministing, The F-Word, Our Bodies Our Blog, Bitch Ph.D. (see the full list here).

  Jill is a blogger for Feministe, one of the web’s first feminist blogs, as well as a journalist and recent graduate of New York University’s law school.

  Tell me about the book and how it came together.

  It was Jaclyn [Friedman] and Jessica [Valenti]’s brainchild. There were a lot of conversations across online feminist communities about how we discuss rape and sexual assault, and a lot of the long-standing issues came to a head when there was this article by Liz Funk called “Underage Women Sidle up to Barroom Risks”, that claimed by going out drinking or engaging a certain way with men that women are putting themselves at risk for rape.

  It put the onus on women to avoid being raped and this is something we’re used to seeing in the media generally but this was published in Women’s e-News which is a feminist publication, and that was sort of unnerving for a lot of us. So Jaclyn and Jessica wrote an article on Women’s e-News in response, and there was a lot of good online discussion and they got the idea to put all of that discussion in one place an turn it into a book.

  (more inside…)

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