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Web Features
Choosing the Right Contraception For You
Sexuality is an important part of human existence. It allows us to enjoy our bodies, interact with one another and, if we so choose, procreate. Sex is also present in our everyday realities and seems to “penetrate” every aspect of human life. However, like many things, sex comes with its own set of consequences and responsibilities. It can present you with outcomes which may seriously affect your well-being. Consequences, which can arise out of unprotected sex, … READ MORE
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Web Features
Helping out in Tanzania
In July 2010, then-16-year old Ariane Poulin travelled to Arusha, Tanzania with her family to help build a high school for Maasai girls. As well as carrying buckets of water, digging and moving materials around the site, Ariane took many photographs, on and off the construction site. Her family, other volunteers, friends made along the way, and the landscape of Maasailand were her subjects. Ariane plans to return to Arusha in 2012 to help expand the school. … READ MORE
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Web Features
Tweeting Feminists: Listen Up!
Welcome to Listen Up!, a Shameless audio section featuring podcasts on a wide variety of topics. Our first series is Tweeting Feminists, a podcast about feminism and social media by Shameless Arts Editor and Ryerson grad student, Ronak Ghorbani. In this second episode, Ronak chats with women’s studies professor and Feminist Fatale Melanie Klein about her blog and how the web is changing feminism. Tweeting Feminists Episode Two by ronak_gee … READ MORE
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Web Features
Tweeting Feminists: Listen Up!
Welcome to Listen Up!, a Shameless audio section featuring podcasts on a wide variety of topics. Our first series is Tweeting Feminists, a podcast about feminism and social media by Shameless Arts Editor and Ryerson grad student, Ronak Ghorbani. In this first episode, Ronak chats with journalist, cultural critic and co-author of Girl Drive, Nona Willis Aronowitz, about the feminist blogosphere and social media. Tweeting Feminists Episode One by ronak_gee … READ MORE
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Web Features
News Bites: News Bites: News Round-Up
Here is a round-up of some news items of interest for this week. Have a tip for a future news round-up? Email blogtips@shamelessmag.com At Daily Kos: Iowa Woman Jailed for Thinking About an Abortion collects stories of three women facing serious lack of reproductive freedom in the United States. The folks at GOOD have posted a story about the heroic young woman who sacrificed herself to save thousands of lives during the Japanese tsunami. The Tyee has a two-part … READ MORE
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Web Features
From Farm to Plate
If you shamelessly frequent this blog, then you might notice that my name is a new addition to the roster of Shameless contributors. I am indeed new to the team and I am really excited to be writing about all aspects of food both here on the blog, as well as for Shameless in print. While my Shameless blog debut occurred earlier with a post on my recent food-themed bike tour, I thought I’d make my second post more of … READ MORE
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Web Features
Toronto’s Radio Flyers: Meet some of Toronto’s female road warriors: Bike messengers
Cycling took stage in Toronto’s mayoral election last year. Some candidates and citizens question why people choose to cycle. To others, the reasons are obvious: low cost, it’s a good source of exercise, it’s fun and it’s environmentally sustainable. Thinking beyond commuters and athletes to those cyclists who keep our courthouses, banks, and government offices running smoothly, I chose to learn more about the work of bike messengers. I see bike messengers on the street and … READ MORE
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Web Features
How-to D.I.Y. T-Shirt Dress: From shirt to dress, the humble tee does it all
You’re in Value Village, going through the men’s t-shirt section, hoping to come across the perfect shirt for a “middle-aged dad” theme party, and like a beacon from heaven above, you see it: the perfect Misfits shirt. The problem is, the Crimson Ghost logo is staring at you from an XXL t-shirt with a moth-bitten collar. Not wanting to let a gem such as this go to waste, you grab it, pay the $4.99 for … READ MORE
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Web Features
Editor’s Letter
Earlier this year, we released a new mandate and, with it, we sent out a call: we are Shameless, and we are putting together a team of people devoted to grassroots publishing, each with a commitment to antioppression and inclusive feminist politics; each with time, vision and a desire to work many (many) hours to bring this unapologetic alternative magazine to young women and trans youth. Three times a year. Admittedly, it was a tall order. … READ MORE
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Web Features
The Sisterhood: Are sororities feminist organizations?
It’s a September evening, and a small classroom at the University of Toronto holds about 30 young women. They might be more conventionally attractive, a bit better dressed than average, but mostly they look like any group of undergrads. A lone guy settles in to wait for the lecture to start. After an awkward minute, someone tells him that he is in the wrong room. After all, this is an information meeting about sororities. Many students … READ MORE
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Web Features
Advice: Telling your parents you’re trans
Dear Shameless: I want to tell my parents that I’m transgender, but I’m scared of how they’ll react. What should I do? Gender is complicated. There are entire schools dedicated to its study, where people spend their intellectual lives trying to figure gender out. Cultural construction? Fact of nature? Psycho-social phenomenon? Fortunately, the average transgender person doesn’t have to have an answer to this question — it’s enough to know that, although you were born with … READ MORE
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Web Features
DIY: Pant Strap: Cycling pant strap
Spring is upon us and what better way to welcome a new season of bike riding in the sunshine than making your own essential cycling accessory, the pant strap? Straps are a must-have for anyone who cycles in pants; they prevent your pant leg from getting caught in the bike gears, which can have disastrous consequences. (It’s especially dangerous if you are riding a fixed-gear bicycle!) A more stylish alternative to the old pant-tucked-in-sock, these … READ MORE
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Web Features
Editor’s Letter
It’s been a hectic time since our Spring issue. The team has been hard at work on our first Shameless book and planning some exciting surprises for the future (our wish list includes a podcast, more events and a short story contest). The Canadian F-Word awards named www.shamelessmag.com the best feminist blog in Canada (thanks to our great blogging team). And, of course, we’ve been pulling together this issue. So, without further ado, here are … READ MORE
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Web Features
Media Savvy: Hollywood’s Square: A peek behind the Hollywood curtain
I should have known better than to think I would like Iron Man. To be fair, I was expecting the bare minimum: a few hours of mindless entertainment, some cool superhero tricks and perhaps a digestible life lesson along the lines of Spiderman’s “with great power comes great responsibility.” That is something I can get behind. But Iron Man was disappointing: two hours of macho aggression cheered on by a heavy-metal soundtrack, technological fetishism, glamourized militarism, … READ MORE
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Web Features
And In This Corner: Writing through trauma: Writing through trauma
Most of my life I’ve felt ashamed: ashamed of growing up poor, ashamed of being abused and neglected as a child and ashamed of being black in a world that idealizes whiteness. Writing wasn’t a conscious decision in the beginning. Writing was just the thing that was most accessible to a poor, black immigrant child. I wrote cryptic poems for most of my teen years, poems that documented my loneliness, depression and suicidal feelings. I started … READ MORE
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Web Features
Arts Profile: Gender Outlaw: Kate Bornstein travels beyond gender
Kate Bornstein walks onstage looking a bit like an older, punk Julianne Moore. She’s tall with shiny red hair; her round glasses are bold and colourful; tattoos spread across her arms beneath a black-and-white gingham dress. It’s the only black and white thing about her. In a performance that’s part classroom, part theatre and part therapy session, one message is clear: things don’t always fall into one of two categories. Born a boy, Bornstein became a … READ MORE
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Web Features
Geek Chic: Mothers of Invention: Five great women inventors
They dream up, design and redefine how we live in the world. From the wheel to the iPod to the squeezable ketchup bottle, the inventor — full of wild ideas and steadfast vision — has an uncanny ability to make the rest of us blurt out, “Why the hell didn’t I think of that?” While many women inventors have been forgotten (patents, granting an inventor sole rights to their work, were doled out only to men … READ MORE
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Web Features
The Last Word: Girl
I think it’s about time I set the record straight on something: I’m not a girl. No, it’s not that I’m renouncing my gender or recovering from a sex-change operation. But, at 28 years of age, with a full-time job, my own apartment and a disposition as crotchety as that of your average octogenarian, it’s safe to say I’m no longer a girl. So why do people keep calling me that? And it’s not just me. On … READ MORE
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Web Features
Editor’s letter
When Shameless magazine goes into its frenzied production period, something amazing happens. Friends, co-workers and volunteers all gather for the tedious process of poring over proofs, trying to find errors, double checking website addresses, hunting down spelling mistakes and brainstorming headlines. In exchange, I feed people. Tables are filled with containers of hummus and bowls filled with candy. We move the toaster from my kitchen into the living room so we can toast bagels. We have … READ MORE
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Web Features
Media savvy: The onslaught of ambivalence
A funny thing happens when I ask my feminist friends what they think of Dove’s “Campaign For Real Beauty.” People from whom I expect bold, confident opinions respond with qualifications, disclaimers and paragraph-long explanations that meander back and forth between underwhelmed appreciation and reluctant skepticism. This is strange. After all, isn’t this the ad campaign that sticks it to the beauty industry’s shallow depiction of women? It seems we should be excited about Dove’s ads, which … READ MORE