From December 1-7, Advocates for Youth, the International Youth Leadership Council and the International Youth Speak Out Project are hosting a Blog-a-thon to honor World AIDS Week.

Through this initiative, young people from all over the world will join together in solidarity to discuss the impact of HIV and AIDS and how they have affected their lives and communities. In facilitating this global dialogue, we are encouraging young people to post blogs, poems, images, art work, videos and anything else they can imagine to express their feelings about HIV and AIDS.

This is an entirely new Advocates’ initiative, and it all depends on young people like you to make it work!

Speak up, fight AIDS and blog here.

And be sure to join our Facebook Event!

Any Vancouverites out there, I’ll see you at this tomorrow night! So excited!

Saturday December 6th is the National Day of Action and Remembrance on Violence Against Women.

Women Won’t Forget invite you to attend our annual candlelight vigil on Saturday, December 6 at 6 pm at Philosopher’s Walk, University of Toronto (path off Bloor St. between the Royal Ontario Museum and the Royal Conservatory of Music). We gather to remember the fourteen women who were killed in Montreal as well as the women who have been killed since then because of male violence. The Vigil consists of a native healing ceremony, speakers and performers and ends with the laying of roses. Everyone is welcome. Ceremony proceeds regardless of the weather.

For more information call 416.762.8798 or visit www.womenwontforget.org

The aim of Women Won’t Forget is to heighten awareness of the continuing and pervasive extent of abuse against women in our society and to encourage and support efforts to end it. Since 1989, we have met to tell the stories of those women who can no longer speak for themselves. Our permanent memorial consists of 14 red oak trees, a granite boulder and a memorial plaque.

On Friday, November 28th from 9 a.m to 5 p.m, McGill University will be holding a symposium on behalf of the feminist responses to the Bouchard-Taylor commission. It will feature scholars and representatives of immigrant and women’s groups in Québec including Emilie Connolly and Robyn Maynard (Accommodate This!), and Samaa Elibyari (Canadian Council of Muslim Women).

Admission is free and you can register by calling 514-398-3911 or e-mail info@mcrtw.mcgill.ca.

Location of symposium is at McGill University, Leacock Building, Room 232.

I’m a big fan of Head & Hands and all their awesome services in Montreal, so big ups to them for doing this!

Head and Hands is hosting 2 free anonymous HIV testing nights as part of our World AIDS Day campaign. These clinics will be taking place Tuesday, Nov. 25th from 5-9:30pm and Monday, Dec. 1st from 1-5pm. Like our medical clinics, the testing nights are confidential, do not require medicare, and for youth 12-25.

5833 Sherbrooke West, Montréal
Metro Vendôme, Bus 105
514-481-0277 info@headandhands.ca

Have I mentioned how much I love Cat and Girl? Oh yes, I believe I have. The webcomic by Dorothy Gambrell never ceases to be a balm for my overcaffeinated, neurotically self-analytic, black-humoured, Babysitters-Club-loving soul.

Whoa, it’s a countercultural comic about counterculture that I’m using to advertise counterculture. The mind boggleth.

Okay, but the real point of this post is to let you know that YOUR SOUL TOO can be soothed by such products of minds depraved and genius, in material form no less! Montreal’s annual zine fair, Expozine, is happening this weekend, for two whole days of photocopied, silkscreened, stapled, hand-bound, sketched out and jittery madness. 200+ tables of independent bookworks, comics, art, crafts, posters, clothes, buttons, and snacks. Plus I’ll be there tabling with Invisible Publishing, where I’ll be flogging my book, along with books by such Shameless luminaries as Stacey May Fowles and Thea Lim.

Crucial deets:

Saturday and Sunday November 29th and 30th, 12 - 6
5035 St. Dominique between St. Joseph and Laurier (Metro Laurier)
FREE ADMISSION (take that, Toronto!)

Shameless magazine will be hosting an all ages feminist dance party at the Gladstone Melody Bar in Toronto on December 10! We’re doing so in partnership with the fabulous Granny Boots.

Featuring the fantastic DJ styings of DJ Winnie, DJ Nolan Natasha, and DJ HollyRock!

Shameless and Granny Boots!
Wed Dec 10th from 7:30-10pmish
Gladstone Melody Bar
1214 Queen St West

(Brought to you by the Gladstone Hotel and Chelsey Licht-a-Womyn, Granny Boots is FREE weekly entertainment for queers. If you love to be home by 11pm or like to party hard till midnight, this night’s for you. Every Week is Different! Email chelsey.lichtman@gmail.com if you wanna host a Granny Boots!)

Our friends at Worn Journal are launching their new issue #7 this Saturday November 29 in Toronto with style, as per usual!

The new issue includes articles on mannequin history, global fashion, luxury branding, and spandex!

You may remember Shameless reviewer Erin Elliott had this to say about Worn’s issue #5 in an older print issue of Shameless:

Discovering Montreal’s Worn Fashion Journal is as refreshing as trading in sweaty wool socks for liberating flip flops on the first day of spring. Worn aims to “discover what is of lasting value about clothing and style” by wandering through a walk-in closet’s worth of ideas about fashion and art. The history of Toile de Jouy - those 18th century scenes printed on your Grandma’s bedspread - reveals rich stories hidden in plain sight. Between Countess di Castiglione scandalous self-portraits in the 1800’s and Elsa Schiaparelli’s shoe-shaped hats that rocked the 1920’s, Worn writers showcase female fashion rebels that put L.A.M.B. to shame. In “The F Word” Emily Raine asks “If I’m a feminist, then why can’t I dress like a girl?” This inspiring magazine has a clear answer: You can.

The launch event is a winter formal slow dance which is all-ages and queer-friendly. It will take place at Dovercourt House (805 Dovercourt Rd, Toronto), a lovely dance studio decked with crepe paper streamers, balloons and mirror ball. You get a dancecard to reserve a special tune and Resident Dancers for any shy boys and girls. There is also a photographer to take date and non-date photos to remember the night (and outfits) by.

Doors open at 9:00pm. Entrance cost is $10 and includes a dancecard and Issue 7 of Worn Fashion Journal.

For more queer fashion inspiration, check out the photos after the jump!

(more inside…)

2-Spirited People of the 1st Nation proudly presents:
The Bold and the Brave
NishaLicious DRAG SHOW and FUNDRAISER

No cover charge, donations are kindly accepted.

Date: Nov. 25. 2008
Where: George’s Play, 504 Church Street, Toronto
Time: 9pm – 11pm

ALL PROCEEDS WILL SUPPORT THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS FUND

For more information, please contact: springwater@2spirits.com