Illustration by Beena Mistry

Kindness and fairness are simple, basic ideas taught to most of us at an early age. But I only began to understand what they meant after hearing about Shannen Koostachin.

Shannen, a member of the Attawapiskat First Nation, wanted to attend a school with adequate facilities. She pleaded with the Canadian federal government to build a school in her community, but her initial demands were met with silence. Shannen tragically died in a car accident in 2010, but her activism led to the building of the Kattawapiskak Elementary School in 2014. Her activism also inspired the youth-led campaign “Shannen’s Dream” that continues to advocate for equal education for all Indigenous children.

Shannen’s story found me in Grade 2, and forced me to question why I don’t have to worry about schooling, while others – like Shannen ­– have to fight for basic rights that should be guaranteed. It seemed obvious that Shannen’s struggle was a result of unfairness, or what I later came to understand as injustice. Shannen’s work inspired me to advocate for Indigenous children who faced similar injustices.

I had good intentions, but quickly learned that I could not understand Shannen’s struggle. I could never experience the pain and injustice caused by colonization’s legacy, or the unfairness of having inadequate schooling. So how could I confront the injustice I witnessed? This question helped me realize I could ally with Indigenous-led movements.

First, I found a mentor within the Indigenous community. Finding a mentor is an important step to becoming an ally because it encourages listening and learning. Indigenous cultures place great emphasis on the storyteller as part of an oral tradition that passes knowledge down to younger generations. We can learn from these traditions when we engage with Indigenous cultures.

My most important mentor has been Dr. Cindy Blackstock. Dr. Blackstock is the executive director of The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. Cindy successfully launched a human rights case against the Canadian government arguing that they discriminated against First Nations children by underfunding the on-reserve child welfare system. Dr. Blackstock helped me understand that you don’t need to experience injustice to recognize and address it. She continues to encourage my activism and welcomes contributions I make to Indigenous-led movements.

Cindy’s mentorship combined with my growing activism made me see that social movements succeed only with help from the larger society. Cindy and Shannen are not just victims of injustice. They are the storytellers that define injustice and motivate us to advocate for change.

I decided that I wanted to give voice to their struggle in my own way. I spoke at The Ottawa International Writers Festival, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and at a Unifor convention. My words echoed the lessons I learned from Cindy and Shannen, and challenged those who refused to see that change was necessary. I also interned at The First Nations Family Caring Society. While there, I had the opportunity to work with other youth activists on campaigns like “Touchstones of Hope” and “Orange Shirt Day.”

Allies are needed for these campaigns. If you want to become an ally to Indigenous activism, here are some Indigenous-led movements that you can support:

Jordan’s Principle honours Jordan River Anderson and addresses the inequities faced by Indigenous children when they seek public services. It ensures public services administered to Indigenous children take into account the cultural needs and history of a colonized peoples.

The Assembly of First Nations has a policy initiative dedicated to addressing the disproportionate amount of violence faced by Indigenous girls, women and two-spirited people. They seek the development of a national action plan to end violence against Indigenous women and girls.

The Spirit Bear campaign engages youth activists by providing resources to learn about discrimination against Indigenous children. Spirit Bear has a book and a movie to teach children about The Human Rights Tribunal and how they can support the campaign.

The most important part of being an ally is knowing that learning and growing is a process. My understanding of unfairness was nurtured and deepened when I learned about those in our society who are not as privileged as I am. I also learned that those most harmed by injustice welcome the help of others. My journey is not complete; I continue to learn and listen on my way to becoming an effective ally.

Illustration: Erin McPhee

Shameless magazine, a Canadian, independent, feminist voice for teens with marginalized genders, is looking for a volunteer circulation manager. Are you an organizational whiz? Do you love spreadsheets and systems? Do you have a commitment to anti-oppression and inclusive feminist politics? Do you have some time to volunteer and a vision for Shameless? Then we need you.

We are looking for a smart, sassy, shameless person to work as our new circulation manager. This is a business position, NOT an editorial position.

Role description:

Database and Inventory Management
- Manages fulfillment of purchased subscriptions, individual issue purchases and wholesale orders
- Manages the online store on the Shameless website
- Manages subscriber database and records of sales, subscriptions and renewals
- Manages inventory of back issues
- Prepares mailing lists for each issue

Customer Service
- Acts as the customer service contact for all subscription-related correspondence
- Manages renewals and sends renewal reminders
- Manages relationships with wholesalers and distributors
- Leads promotion and outreach to sell subscriptions and individual issues
- Represents the magazine at events such as Word on the Street and zine fairs

The ideal candidate will:
- Have an understanding of and commitment to Shameless’s mandate
- Be super organized and an excellent communicator (there is a large volume of email involved in this role)
- Have access to sufficient storage space for several cartons of magazines (rented/external storage space may be an option) and be able to commit to bi-weekly visits to a post office
- Have an affinity for spreadsheets and databases
- Be available for regular team meetings
- Work well with a team

We are looking for people who work well collaboratively, who have a good sense of Shameless’s mandate, who are committed to anti-racist feminist politics, and who are excellent communicators and work well over email (Shameless has no office).

All positions are part-time, requiring 5-10 hours per week, depending on the production cycle of the magazine. Most people who work on the magazine do so outside of regular business hours, and meetings are held during evenings and weekends. This role requires a commitment to checking email at least three times a week.

Like all roles on this volunteer-run magazine, these positions are unpaid; we offer a $50 honourarium per issue for all positions. (If you have ideas for how we can change that, then please get in touch!).

We strongly encourage applications from Black and Indigenous people, people of colour, queer and trans folks, and those with experience with anti-racist feminist politics and/or anti-racist feminist organizing. We are open to building capacity and creating mentorship opportunities for candidates who are new to this type of work.

Although we have team members across what is now known as Canada, because this role requires access to physical inventory, this role is Toronto-based.

If you have questions or require support with your application, please feel free to contact Julia at julia@shamelessmag.com.

Please email a resume and cover letter with examples of your organizational prowess to julia@shamelessmag.com. The deadline for applications is April 23, 2021. We’ll contact you if we’d like to set up an interview.

Illustration: Erin McPhee

Shameless magazine, Canada’s independent, feminist voice for teens with marginalized genders, is hiring volunteer editors for multiple positions. Are you devoted to grassroots publishing? Do you have a commitment to anti-oppression and inclusive feminist politics? Do you have some time to volunteer, and a vision for Shameless? Then we need you.

We are looking for smart, sassy, shameless people to fill the roles of front-of-book editor, columns editor, and reviews editor.

Job description for all three roles:
- Work with the editorial team to develop ideas for and plan the section
- Assign stories to writers and work directly with them to shape stories
- Plan internal submission deadlines for writers to ensure pieces are submitted in a timely manner
- Edit stories and communicate with writers on drafts
- Occasionally represent the website and/or magazine at events such as feminist zine fairs and Word on the Street

Please note that the reviews editor will also:
- Curate a list of 20-25 materials to review, including books, movies, and/or music
- Secure copies of review materials from publishers and press agents
- Source accompanying images for the reviews

The ideal candidate will:
- Have an understanding of and commitment to Shameless’s mandate
- Have excellent writing and editing skills
- Be super organized (ie. managing deadlines) and an excellent communicator
- Have lots of story ideas
- Be available for monthly editorial meetings and occasional proofing sessions
- Work well with a team, especially over email/Slack
- Contacts with writers and/or artists is a plus

All positions are part-time, requiring 5-10 hours per week depending on the production cycle of the magazine. Most people who work on the magazine do so outside of regular business hours, and meetings are typically held during evenings and weekends.

Like all roles on this volunteer-run magazine, these positions are unpaid. Each volunteer staff person receives a small honorarium ($50) per issue. (If you have ideas for how we can change that, then please get in touch!)

We strongly encourage applications from Black and Indigenous people, people of colour, queer and trans folks, and those with experience with anti-racist feminist politics and/or anti-racist feminist organizing. We are open to building capacity and creating mentorship opportunities for candidates who are fresh to editorial work. We have historically prioritized candidates in the Greater Toronto Area to better facilitate face-to-face meetings with magazine staff, but are open to working through other ways of working in order to welcome candidates from across what is now known as Canada. If you have questions or require support with your application, please feel free to contact Sheila at sheila@shamelessmag.com.

Please email a resume, a cover letter containing your ideas for the magazine/website, and three writing samples (published or unpublished) to talkingback@shamelessmag.com. The deadline for applications is Friday, April 23, 2021. We’ll contact you if we’d like to set up an interview.

Illustration: Saul Freedman-Lawson

Shameless is thrilled to announce we will host the our second annual Talking Back Feminist Media Conference online on March 13-14, 2021. This conference is funded by the Toronto Arts Council. The conference theme is Feminist Media as Social Justice. This will be a space to collaborate, co-create, imagine, celebrate, scheme and dream about the radical potential of feminist media as it relates to building a better, more just world.

This year, we’re going virtual! We are hoping that this shift in format allows new presenters and audiences to access and contribute to the conversations in exciting ways.

Check out the session descriptions and buy your tickets!!

CALLOUT FOR BREAKTIME ACTIVITIES

Some of the best parts of a conference are those times between sessions, when new ideas and inspirations bubble over and great connections are made. Although there are a lot of perks to holding a conference online - people from all over can attend! - we don’t want to miss out on those opportunities to connect between sessions.

Run a breaktime activity!
This is where YOU come in! We are looking for short activities - ten minutes or so - that our attendees can engage in between sessions.

Make it accessible and participatory
We are looking for text-based activities so that all attendees can join in, including those who will be using live captioning or ASL interpretation to participate in the conference sessions. Our captioner and interpreters need breaks, too, so they will be unavailable during the break times. We will have a conference Slack open throughout the weekend - this would be a great place to run your activity.

What kinds of activities might fit?
Themed conversation prompts, text-based games, trivia, photo challenges, playlists, short videos (check for captioning options), guided meditation … or any other fun activity we haven’t thought of! Feel free to leverage other apps, as long as they are widely available, free to use and text-based or with captions.

Please send your activity ideas to julia@shamelessmag.com by Wednesday, March 3. All volunteer activity leaders will receive free admission to the conference on the day of your activity.

CALLOUT FOR VOLUNTEERS IN SUPPORT ROLES

We are currently seeking volunteers for support roles. As a thank-you for their time, all volunteers will receive free admission to the rest of the conference.

Please get in touch with julia@shamelessmag.com if you are interested in volunteering. Let us know your availability and your comfort level with Zoom, but don’t worry - we can run through the tech stuff ahead of time!

This callout will remain open until we have filled the roles for all sessions. Check out the session descriptions here.

Role: Social media support
Time Commitment: One or more sessions (1 hour each)
Description: Live-tweeting and engaging with conference attendees and the Shameless community via the Shameless Twitter

Role: Session support
Time Commitment: One or more sessions (1 hour each, plus 15 minutes of tech check time)
Description:
- Letting participants in to the session
- Opening the session and introducing the speaker(s)
- Engaging in the Zoom chat if attendees should need tech support or have concerns
- Monitoring the time and providing time checks to the presenter(s)

Illustration by Marlee Jennings

Dear fellow progressives,

If you advocate for positive, inclusive advances in society, believe in equality and social support, think science and climate change are real, support LGBTQ+ rights and do not believe religion should dictate public policy, I’d like to chat with you for a moment.

We need to talk about ableism and lack of accessibility in progressive spaces. There’s still too much of the former and not enough of the latter. We’re supposedly on the same side, striving for the same ideals, but some of you still treat disability as a flaw, an insult or an inconvenience. It’s been four long years since the original charter of the Women’s March referred to disability as a burden. It’s now 2021. Why are we still doing this?

What made me angry? Maybe it was the the U.S. congressman who claims he respects his constituents, but made a video – filmed by his kids – mocking hand tremors.

Maybe it’s the way a podcast with a transcript is as rare as a unicorn.

Maybe it’s the way words like “crazy” and “dementia” are freely thrown around as pejoratives.

Maybe it’s the people who insist that illness can be cured by diet and exercise, so if we all followed the Paleo Carb Free Super Seaweed Probiotic Diet, bought only organic food and did yoga, we wouldn’t need healthcare.

Maybe it was the non-profit supposedly about “self-acceptance” that gaslit me when I requested accommodation for an activity, and then made public passive-aggressive comments about it.

Maybe it was reading of that New Zealand restaurant chain that tried to “start a conversation” by substituting an ingredient – that was a potential allergen – without informing its customers. Or that Manhattan restaurant that deliberately served food with high-gluten flour to customers who requested gluten-free meals.

Maybe it was hearing about companies that refused to accommodate disabled people’s requests to work from home but, when the pandemic began, arranged full-time telecommuting for every single employee.

Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe it’s the collective negative impact on the disabled people who experience these slights firsthand or witness them, and the way it contributes to stereotypes as a whole. Maybe it’s the painful realization that the negativity and stigma surrounding disability are often fuelled by those who claim to be allies.

The Cambridge Dictionary gives a simple definition of ally: “Someone who helps and supports someone else.” With allies like these, do we need enemies?

As a disabled person, one comes to expect that allyship is tenuous at best. Disabled people are welcomed when we’re “inspiring” in a way that makes abled individuals feel good about themselves. If we can conceal all evidence of our disability or illness so those around us don’t have to consider it, we’re golden. However, if we request accommodation of any kind or share concerns that we’re not being treated respectfully, we’re shunned. Worse, people often react viscerally if we don’t laugh along with our own denigration. They don’t even consider the possibility that they’re doing any harm or alienating disabled people.

We all know the greatest hits: You need to lighten up. You’re taking it too seriously. You’re misunderstanding. It’s just a joke. I can’t walk on eggshells. People are offended by everything these days. We’re insulting him, not everyone with that disability.

On the right side of the political spectrum, we have people actively trying to kill us by removing assistance for disabled people or insinuating that our lives are “expendable.” The pandemic has made that even more painfully obvious. The death toll from COVID-19 is often downplayed with the rejoinder “but they had pre-existing conditions,” as though that makes lives less valuable.

On the left we have you, our supposed allies. However, when it comes to interaction on a personal level, your allyship often seems to exist more in theory than in practice. Sure, you’ll vote for that law expanding benefits for disabled people, but then you’ll turn around and share ableist memes on social media or accuse someone of “faking it” because they are an ambulatory wheelchair user. Do you even realize the dichotomy there?

This has not swayed me in any way from actively supporting progressive political ideals and candidates, because the goals are still very important. I am hopeful that the majority of people who support progressive platforms actively strive to do better. Doesn’t the label inherently reflect an openness to progress?

I also know that awareness is something we learn over time. Sometimes we might not even realize what we’re doing is hurtful until someone calls it to our attention. There may have been no malicious intent. The problem is that intent doesn’t change outcome. The words still hurt and the stereotypes are still perpetuated, even if you didn’t mean it that way.

As time goes on, I find that, for my own self-care, the majority of my support for the progressive movement occurs in the absence of meaningful dialogue and social interaction with the non-disabled community. I don’t trust you anymore, and I’m exhausted by the casual ableism many of you exhibit. After all, if you have not bothered to make your events and outreach programs accessible, you clearly don’t want me there anyway.

Progressive community, do you actually want to be inclusive, or just claim that you are because it sounds good? I’d like to believe it’s the former.

If you want to truly be allies to ill and disabled people, you need to start paying attention to the harm it does when you denigrate disability. Stop talking over disabled people. Listen more. Let your allyship be something tangible, not meaningless words.

No love whatsoever,

Denise

About the Author: Denise Reich (she/her) has contributed to Shameless for many years, with interests in disability/chronic illness advocacy, Star Wars and classic media. She has danced since she was small.

Illustration: Saul Freedman-Lawson

TICKETS ON SALE NOW! Purchase here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-second-talking-back-feminist-media-conference-tickets-140441493287

Saturday, March 13 and Sunday, March 14, online via Zoom

Please see the schedule in a table format here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f2saQqrD__KF4YrttYwUm7aR_7Yiay_c/view?usp=sharing

General Admission: $25
Youth/student/unwaged/underwaged: $10

THE 2021 TALKING BACK FEMINIST MEDIA CONFERENCE

The 2021 Conference theme is: Feminist Media as Social Justice

Shameless is thrilled to announce we will host the our second annual Talking Back Feminist Media Conference online on March 13-14, 2021. This conference is funded by the Toronto Arts Council.

The conference theme is Feminist Media as Social Justice. This will be a space to collaborate, co-create, imagine, celebrate, scheme and dream about the radical potential of feminist media as it relates to building a better, more just world.

This year, we’re going virtual! We are hoping that this shift in format allows new presenters and audiences to access and contribute to the conversations in exciting ways.

Accessibility

The conference will take place virtually using the Zoom platform. Participants may choose how much they wish to engage; having your video on is completely optional.

Both live captioning and ASL interpretation will be available for all sessions.

Please get in touch with us at talkingback@shamelessmag.com if you have any access questions or requests.

Schedule

To view the schedule in a table format, please click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f2saQqrD__KF4YrttYwUm7aR_7Yiay_c/view?usp=sharing

Saturday, March 13 – Day 1

9:00-10:00: Track 1 Session: Access is Love: Making Your Digital Media Accessible [Presentation] - Julia Métraux

10:00-10:15 BREAK

10:15-11:15 Track 2 Session: The Door’s Still Closed: Addressing Ableism and Accessibility in Progressive Spaces [Presentation and Discussion] - Denise Reich // CW: Discussion of ableism

11:15-11:30 BREAK

11:30-12:30 Arts Talk: Presenters TBC

12:30-1:30 LUNCH BREAK

1:30-2:30 Track 3 Session: Tackling the Algorithm: Digital Activism and How to Use Your Skills For Change [Workshop] - Maud Mostly

2:30-2:45 BREAK

2:45-3:45 Track 4 Session: Archives of Communal Care [Format TBD] - Madeleine Lychek and Vasuki Shanmuganathan, Tamil Archive Project Collective

3:45-4:00 BREAK

4:00-5:00 Track 2 Session: Sustainable Resistance for BIPOC Folx [BIPOC-only Workshop] - Krystal Kavita Jagoo, MSW, RSW

Sunday, March 14 - Day 2

9:00-10:00 Track 4 Session: Laughing Through It: How Women Navigate the Comedy Industry [Panel] - Anasimone George, Lily Makowski, Surer Qaly Deria, Madison Trusolino

10:00-10:15 BREAK

10:15-11:15 Track 3 Session: Voices Beyond the Binary - Working Towards Gender Liberation in Media [Presentation and workshop component] - Rye Orrange, Keeley Sieben

11:15-11:30 BREAK

11:30-12:30 Arts Talk: Presenters TBC

12:30-1:30 LUNCH BREAK

1:30-2:30 Track 2 Session: Fostering Community, Collaboration, and Care on Social Media [Presentation and Discussion] - Margeaux Feldman, Carolyn Collado, and Nisha Mody

2:30-2:45 BREAK

2:45-3:45 Track 1 Session: Shaped by Soundtracks: The Tastemaking Possibilities of So-Call “Girl Culture” [Presentation and discussion] - Morgan Bimm

3:45-4:00 BREAK

4:00-5:00 Track 4 Session: Radical Creating: Liberation through art making and performance [Show and Tell] - Tania Kengatharan

Session Descriptions

TBC: art panels!

Track 1: Advancing, expanding, critiquing and defining feminism through media

Access is Love: Making Your Digital Media Accessible - Julia Métraux (she/her)
This practical presentation will help writers and editors make their media spaces open to as many people as possible. In the first part of the presentation, Métraux will discuss the use of different tools to show you if your website is accessible to Blind users/users with low vision, and will demonstrate adding alt-text to photos on websites and social media to describe the image for screen readers. The second part of the presentation will involve the importance of making sure an interview subject’s needs are met before an interview and provide examples of how to ask people if they need accommodations without forcing them to self-identify as disabled. Finally, Métraux will explain why plain language – text that is easily understandable for the reader – is key to accessible journalism. Attendees will be able to practice writing a piece of news in plain language in this section.
Format: Presentation

Shaped by Soundtracks: The Tastemaking Possibilities of So-Call “Girl Culture” - Morgan Bimm (she/her)
If we consider music and music taste to be a central part of our identities, what can we learn by thinking through the role that music plays in the media we consume(d) as teens and young people? How are ideas of cultural hierarchies, taste, and authenticity established through the music of so-called “girl culture”? In this presentation, I share some highlights from my PhD research, focusing on a number of key case studies that highlight the ways that so-called “girl culture” has always been a site for “talking back” to the masculinist gatekeeping practices that define a lot of music scenes. How do the ways we remember the films and TV soundtracks of our youth matter? What is the connection between the media we consume as young people and our enduring ideas around taste and what counts as “cool”? In what ways have particular waves of “girl culture” (in my research, I focus on the 2000s) make space for individuals who had historically been kept out of particular music scenes and positions of cultural importance? And how do we see the legacy of these media texts and soundtracks living on today?
Format: Presentation and Discussion

Track 2: Building community, forming and nurturing relations through feminist media

The Door’s Still Closed: Addressing Ableism and Accessibility in Progressive Spaces - Denise Reich (she/her)
Being turned away from non-profit events based on “self-acceptance.” Being referred to as a “burden” by a major feminist event. Ableist speech from progressive figures. Doors are still firmly closed for many disabled people in progressive spaces, and even when they’re open, the environment is sometimes far from inclusive. How can we foster accessibility in feminist spaces and media? What specific actions have alienated disabled and ill prospective participants? What specific actions and attitudes would make our spaces more accessible? Learn about specific barriers to participation, and take away suggestions on how to make your spaces, events and media more accessible in this participation-focused presentation.
Format: Presentation and Discussion

Sustainable Resistance for BIPOC Folx - Krystal Kavita Jagoo, MSW, RSW (she/her)
How can BIPOC folx survive the problematic whiteness of the publishing industry? Given what can often be rampant negative experiences with having our writing assessed through a deficiency-based white lens, BIPOC folx will benefit from this workshop, where participants of all genders, ages, and abilities will connect with powerful writing from Black trailblazers Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison. As attendees better understand their own capacity to utilize their writing as sustainable resistance for building community to survive white supremacy, they may leave feeling a sense of empowerment. If the benefits of writing as resistance can be harnessed as a feminist arts practice, BIPOC participants will be better equipped to navigate the challenges of a publishing industry dictated by the white gaze.
This workshop will take participants through a review of Octavia Butler’s “A Few Rules For Predicting The Future” (Essence Magazine) and some quotes from the equally prolific Toni Morrison on writing as resistance, encouraging participants to think of futuristic possibilities that would allow BIPOC folx to thrive in community with each other, followed by a writing exercise to illuminate how the creative process can embody writing as resistance to imagine spaces of liberation for us.
Format: BIPOC-only Workshop

Fostering Community, Collaboration, and Care on Social Media - Margeaux Feldman (they/them ), Carolyn Collado (they/them ), and Nisha Mody (she/her)
Building accountable communities on the supposedly boundary-free space of social media sounds like an impossible task. How do we assert our boundaries when the world of smartphones has made us feel like we should be available 24/7? How do we foster a community centered on collective care and collaboration in the supposedly self-centered space of Instagram? How do we resist the urge to respond to conflict at the speed of the internet? These are some of the questions that we’ll work to address in our session. Each presenter will talk about how principles of disability justice and transformative justice have helped us show up online in the ways that align with our values, offering tangible actions that have supported us in fostering community, collaboration, and care on social media. After each presenter shares some of their story, there will be time for attendees to do some personal reflection before we divide up into breakout groups for a more intimate Q&A. Our hope is that attendees will leave the session with some different roadmaps for building accountable communities and navigating the bumps that come with doing this work on social media.
Format: Presentation and Discussion

Track 3: Supporting and contributing to social movements through feminist media

Tackling the Algorithm: Digital Activism and How to Use Your Skills For Change - Maud Mostly (they/them)
Do you find yourself overwhelmed at the state of the world? Are you trying to stay positive and wanting to contribute to change, but don’t think you have anything to give? If so, then this workshop is for you! The world of social media can be daunting, but for many it is a place where we can find community, participate in progress, and share our experiences. In order to avoid burnout, though, we need to understand and utilise the benefits of social media by finding the answers to questions like
How can we build online communities founded on shared values and goals?
How can we proactively share our stories and experiences?
How do we hold each other accountable online?
How do we combat social media algorithms which actively silence marginalized voices and political content?
And so much more!
This workshop’s goal is to have attendees leave with an understanding that each one of us is capable of participating in progress and change by building on skills we already possess.
Format: Workshop

**Voices Beyond the Binary - Working Towards Gender Liberation in Media - Rye Orrange (they/them), Keeley Sieben **(they/them)
Every day, we absorb media that shapes our biases, thoughts, and views. It’s no secret that middle-aged, cis white people are the brains behind the majority of media we consume - so how does that influence the way that society as a whole views important social justice issues? What would happen if we reinvented the world of media, and brought the voices of marginalized youth to the center? This presentation and workshop will take you through the possibilities that lie within re-imagining the voices behind the media we consume. When media is consumed at the rapid rate it is today, the voices that are heard matter. A world where youth that hold marginalized identities are heard through the media is a world that is capable of real, radical change. Join us to envision a future where the media reflects the values of the people, plus a cool opportunity to turn these ideas into real, tangible action!
Format: Presentation and Workshop

Track 4: Feminist forms of media creation

Radical Creating: Art as Power - Tania Kengatharan (she/her)
Join Tania Kengatharan, a multimedia artist, in exploring the relationship between art making, healing and resistance. In Radical Creating: Art as Power, Tania will combine performance and dialogue to describe and contextualize how art allows us to radically transform and reimagine the world we live in. Beyond the use of art as solely a personal creative outlet, learn about the power of art as a source of feminist media to organize, communicate and connect. This session will explore Tania’s personal experiences of art making and its value in a socially-distanced world and the liberation of creating art when it’s not attached to capital.
Format: Show and tell

Archives of Communal Care - Madeleine Lychek (she/her) and Vasuki Shanmuganathan (she/her), Tamil Archive Project Collective
In our session, we map out what communal care is, why this practice is present in many racialized communities and if it could be useful as a form of resistive media practice for you. During the last year, we had the challenge (along with other members of our collective Tamil Archive Project) to translate our care practices to online media formats. We will highlight three art projects which were collectively created in response; a communal dinner video performance entitled “Dinner for One”, Corona Diaries Series on Loneliness, and a multi-participant performance of gestures of care. Through these examples, we will explore possible projects and acts of care to pursue through media with the audience and encourage them to apply their own understanding of communal and resistive modes of care to their respective communities.
Format: Presentation

Laughing Through It: How Women Navigate the Comedy Industry - Anasimone George (she/her), Lily Makowski (she/her), Surer Qaly Deria (she/her), Madison Trusolino (she/her)
Toronto has a prolific comedy scene, but what is it like navigating the industry as a woman and/or queer comedian? Despite comedy having been found to be an effective way to challenge traditional gender roles, it is still dominated by white, cisgender, straight men. This session will not only address the financial, emotional and physical obstacles women in comedy face, but also how women survive, and thrive, in the industry. Attendees will also be given the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the production of comedy in Toronto specifically and Canada more generally. The session will be led by Anasimone George, a stand-up comedian and producer, Lily Makowski, a comedian and musician, Surer Qaly Deria, a writer, stand-up and sketch comic, and Madison Trusolino, a PhD candidate researching the North American comedy industry. Along with a panel discussion and Q&A, we also hope to inspire women to enter the comedy industry and give tips to up-and-coming comedians.
Format: Panel

Illustration: Beena Mistry

Dear Shameless readers,

We hope that this issue finds you as well as can be, given everything that’s happening in the world, and everything that has happened since our last issue. Prior to the pandemic, and prior to the moment we all decided we’d had enough of white supremacy, police brutality, and the neoliberal neglect of our most vulnerable communities, many of us weren’t okay. Now, after almost a full year of fighting so many battles, on so many fronts, after a full year of not having real-life access to the supports that we may have had, we know that many of us are just hanging on. Before we get into the heart of this issue, we want to take a minute to say that it’s okay not to be okay. We want to honour everything it took to bring you to being present today. We share your grief, rage, and the oscillating feelings of hope and despair. We see you.

It feels like a different world now, when we first imagined the performance issue. Our initial conversations talked about a desire to explore both the performing arts and the role of performance in political organizing, and this got us started on some of the pieces that you see here, exploring performance as an act of radical re-imagination of gender (p.8), a mechanism that can further marginalize and silence (p. 24), and a tool for accessing the truth (p. 36). All of these points still feel relevant today, and we hope that you learn as much from our amazing writers as we did in the process of putting this together.

But something else happened along the way. Those of you who subscribe to Shameless may have noticed that this issue is long overdue. Our mandate is to publish three issues a year, and last year, we managed to get one out the door and into your hands. This issue was meant to be published in summer 2020 and, as I write this letter, it’s mid-January, 2021.

I thought about using this space to apologize to you, our readership. But instead, I want to reflect on why we struggled to get this out the door, and reflect on what it means to perform through production.

In my personal life, I’ll share that in the summer of 2019, I had a baby, Uma. Uma is the light of my life; she’s joyful, curious, and loves trucks and the colour yellow. My first year of parental “leave” was both joyful and complicated by work obligations. I sat on conference calls while I chest-fed her. I hid my pregnancy and leave from some clients, telling them that I was in “meetings” when I was actually caring for her. I woke up at 5am, and I paid for a service that would schedule emails to go out at 9am, so people wouldn’t know that this—having a human life to care for—would impact my work, my schedule, my life, my capacities.

When the pandemic came, nine months into being a new parent, I continued this trend. I leaned into pandemic life; I shared photos of food we cooked in a WhatsApp group (aptly titled “Photos of Food”), I continued trying to juggle being a new parent (now without any extended support from family or friends) with working my day job, with Shameless, and with taking on a new role as a professor in a school that I had never even visited. I packed Uma’s nap time with Zoom conference after Zoom conference, stayed up late, and woke up early, to make everything seem normal. I pressed on. The work I continued to produce during this time, the seeming seamlessness of it, was a performance. Behind the scenes, I was exhausted, stressed and stretched beyond capacity, and sad. I was slowly feeling the gap left by my joyful interactions with friends, with co-conspirators, with Shameless collaborators.

I am used to pretending to be okay, to pretending like things are okay, even when they’re not. That’s something that came from my experience in an immigrant family; we can’t afford to let a ball drop, we can’t afford to ask for what we need, we have to press on.

I am lucky to be around people who have healed from that trauma and those patterns and have learned to be more honest about where they’re at. While the world burned around me, and I scheduled my emails to go out at 9am, I saw friends asking for what they need. I heard people from all parts of my life saying, “I can’t finish this,” or “I need more time.” I sat on the other end of calls while folks honestly said, “I am struggling,” and created space for me to say the same.

So much of 2020 was about performing being okay when we’re not. About pushing through when maybe we just can’t, or shouldn’t. The last 10 months were not business as usual. Many of us were struggling. We needed time and space, and we took it. As I introduce this issue, the performance issue, I am empowered to take off the mask and substitute an apology with an honest look at where we’re at. In that spirit, I hope that you, too, are able to put down what is too heavy to carry, and to do what you need to stay present and “okay” until we meet again.

Yours shamelessly,
Sheila

Illustration by Mallory CK Taylor

In November 2020, history was made in Pennsylvania. Jessica Benham became the first bisexual woman and autistic person to be elected to Pennsylvania’s state legislature. The disability rights activist, who co-founded the Pittsburgh Center for Autistic Advocacy, is one of the few queer and neurodivergent lawmakers in the US. Many may consider Jessica Benham to be a rarity in the autistic or LGBTQ+ community — as a queer autistic person or an autistic queer person — but statistics show that she’s not alone.

On average, autistic people are two or three times more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ or transgender, and the rate of queer identification among autistic women is much higher than autistic men. In a Dutch study, 43% of the autistic women surveyed said they were queer, compared to 18% of autistic men. Among the queer autistic women, many were likely to be bisexual (attracted to people of same and other genders) or asexual (not attracted to people of any gender). Many autistic youth stated that they had LGBTQ+ inclinations since early childhood or their schooling days.

Many autistic people may come out as LGBTQ+ while some of their neurotypical peers may not because of two traits that many autistic people share: a lack of adherence to social norms and a strong sense of honesty. Openly identifying as queer may come a little easier to folks who aren’t tied to social expectations of gender and feel the need to tell the truth. However, LGBTQ+ autistic people who occupy these two dual spectrums face massive challenges in their day-to-day lives.

First, many people — including some parents of queer autistic people — fail to acknowledge that autistic people (and disabled people in general) have their own sexualities. They assume that all autistic people lack the self-awareness or judgement to identify as queer. In fact, in a study of queer autistic adolescents, one-third of the participants said others had questioned their sexual identity based on the fact they were autistic. For example, some told of how others said their queerness is an ‘obsession’ rather than ‘real’ experience, or that their desires are a feature of autism itself. A proportion of parents share these distressing beliefs. Some parents think that queerness is ‘a phase’ while others assume that autistic teenagers may be mimicking their friends’ queer identities because they want to fit in. Parents may even falsely believe that their children do not understand the meaning of words like ‘queer’ or ‘transgender.’ If their children come out as LGBTQ+, these parents likely will have negative reactions. It is true that, just like neurotypical teenagers, some autistic youth may try on different identity labels in puberty as they explore their changing bodies, but there shouldn’t be double standards for autistic people.

Getting adequate sex education is an additional challenge for queer autistic youth. Autistic people know less about sex and receive less sex education than their neurotypical peers and are more likely to be sexually exploited or abused than neurotypical people. A lack of sex education can mean that autistic people, whether heterosexual or homosexual, may not have the knowledge or resources to understand their sexuality, desires, and what is appropriate sexual behaviour.

While not adhering to social expectations can encourage autistic people to live authentically, like by coming out as queer, it can also lead to serious issues. Autistic people may have problems understanding their sexual feelings and infatuations, leading to unhealthy behaviours such as stalking and harassment. This is because autistic people receive less sex education, and may be sensorily overwhelmed by feelings and sensations. Autistic people also may not be able to interpret sexual cues or recognize when a situation becomes dangerous, and may thus have a higher chance of receiving unwanted advances or assault. In one study, autistic women were found to overlook subtle sexual cues and even mimic them unconsciously, resulting in them receiving more advances than welcomed. This is an indirect result of masking or “copy-and-paste”, when an individual copies the actions of people around them to blend in to societal norms, as explained in my previous article about girls and autism. Additionally, autistic people may masturbate inappropriately in public places. Masturbation is a natural activity for any child going through puberty, but autistic people have difficulties adhering to social cues, and may not be able to distinguish between public places and private places. Unfortunately, inappropriate masturbation can be considered a crime. A comprehensive sex education could make a huge difference.

According to one survey, autistic people reported that they first learned about sex from pornography, television and the internet, while non-autistic people surveyed learned it from teachers, parents and friends. The study went on to say that this was due to unequal sex education. Autistic students are being pulled out of sexuality education classes for various reasons, such as receiving special education or being deemed “unsuitable” for such classes, and were not given appropriate lessons tailored to their needs. Teachers rarely develop sex education curriculums to support autistic people, including role-play scenarios, an advice network and peer discussions that may prove helpful. Parents also have the responsibility to talk to their children about sexuality, including the intersection of autism and queerness, but are faced with a lack of resources. In research conducted with parents of autistic people, all of them agreed that parents played the main role in sex education for their children, but they did not have the materials and professional support needed.

Queerness is rarely explored in sex education. As of now, only nine states in America cover LGBTQ+ in sexuality education. This may lead to a toxic culture of bullying as straight students aren’t taught to recognize and respect sexualities different from their own. Queer students may feel pressured by to stay in the closet and keep their identities secret. Furthermore, treating queer people as lesser people (or even ignoring their existence) subtly permits violence to occur. Sarah Bess, a queer autistic activist and writer, told of how her sex education teacher enabled physical assault on her. “My seventh-grade sex ed class was taught by a gym coach who watched two boys beat the sh*t out of me after school one day. He just laughed, got in his car and drove off.” The threat of violence in all forms is very real for queer autistic youth. Is that the message we want to be sending to them?

Being autistic and queer means living at the intersection of multiple oppressions — perhaps more depending on other factors like gender, race, and class — which can negatively impact queer autistic individuals’ mental health. Both autistic people and LGBTQ+ people have higher depression and suicide rates than the general population. This could be related to a form of psychological distress known as minority stress. Autistic people and queer people must battle with ableism and homo/trans/biphobia, respectively. Discrimination does not just lead to bullying, but also feeling pressured to of hide their neurodivergent or queer identity and internalizing ableism or homo/trans/biphobia. When members of stigmatized minority groups face high levels of discrimination daily, they experience physiological stress responses such as high blood pressure and anxiety. Because of the stigma surrounding their identities, queer autistic people may also not be able to find friends they can trust and confide it, which can mean a greater risk to mental health issues.

As queer autistic people try to address these mental health issues, they still face barriers. It is difficult to find healthcare professionals who can cater to both autistic and queer people. There is a lack of understanding about their brains and bodies, and how best to resolve their health issues, among mental healthcare professionals. Queer autistic people may be non-verbal, or have problems communicating their emotions accurately. Their bodies function differently from others, and coping strategies that may be effective for the general population just do not work for differently-wired brains. Difficulties with accessing treatment and support have big impacts on autistic people’s well-being and risk of suicide.

At first glance, the autistic community and LGBTQ+ community may not seem to have much in common besides facing extensive discrimination. But, there is much more to these communities than that. They share stunning similarities — the rainbow flag that symbolizes the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the word “spectrum” in the autism spectrum, both show the diverse spectrums that are a feature of the communities. Another brilliant feature is that each of these communities brings a unique way of thinking about life to the table. Not only that, even though the autistic and queer communities are rarely accepted by society, they foster cultures of acceptance and celebration of differences.This diversity and culture gives the vibrant spice that can’t be found anywhere else. Many autistic people and queer people have shared stories of finding self-acceptance and true friends when immersing themselves in their communities, including enormous online communities, viral Twitter hashtags and bonding events attended by millions.

With these colourful spectrums, both the autistic community and LGBTQ+ community must keep in mind the intersections between them, so that everyone’s needs can be served. There are very few organizations and resources that can serve people in both communities. Autistic community groups and LGBTQ+ community groups must be more proactively inclusive for all their members. For example, LGBTQ+ organizations should cater to the sensory needs of queer autistic people, by providing quiet rooms where autistic people can spend time alone. Likewise, autistic communities online should welcome queer members and set out safe spaces for them to discuss sexuality with other queer autistic people.

In order to create a welcoming and inclusive society for all, change must start from us. Parents should believe and respect their autistic children’s sexuality. Access to sex education must be granted to autistic students and queer students, and therapy programs for autistic people should include information about LGBTQ+ communities. With this kind of commitment, straight autistic people and neurotypical LGBTQ+ people could be tremendous allies for queer autistic people.

About the Author: Lucinda Thee (she/her) is a young writer in Singapore who is the youngest finalist in New Zealand’s NFFD Youth Competition 2020 and has been published in Overachiever Magazine, BAZOOF! and Skipping Stones. She is also a writer for websites such as Gen Z Writes and Plastic-Lite SG. Being autistic with mild scoliosis, she is passionate about writing about disability hot topics. She is currently addicted to puzzle-solving and website building.

Illustration by Ki Chin

This piece was first published under a different title on She Does the City.

Content Warning: Mentions of drug use

When I look back on the past decade, I see many versions of myself. Some chapters are more upsetting than others, like when I was twenty-three, living at home, desperately wanting to be loved, and without any boundaries. I needed to have the rug ripped from under me a few times to begin acknowledging my past, the patterns I continued to perpetuate, and begin advocating for myself.

“Camille, why do you even like this show?” He stared at the screen with a furrowed brow. I was lying on his bed watching the first season of Girls on his computer. It was raunchy, real, and I was intrigued by the women’s rawness.

“I don’t know… I kind of like it…” I felt mildly embarrassed, but even more than that I felt like I was about to get in trouble. Though I was pushing twenty-two, I still felt like a kid. I was working, doing stand up, and living at home. Now, I found myself twisted up in my first boyfriend.

“This show’s lame. It’s going to make women feel like they can actually act like that. Whatever, it’s your brain.” I felt his annoyance surge through my body as he left the room.

“Yeah, you’re totally right,” I yelled after him. “Okay, I’m done watching! Anyway, Lena Dunham’s not even attractive, who does she think she is!” I switched the monitor off while praying that me watching this now stupidly horrible show wouldn’t ruin our night together. I felt dumb and I hoped this didn’t make him think so too.

I noticed early on in the relationship that he had some issues with women in general, but I wasn’t able to stand up for myself or other women at that time. I didn’t take issue with his lack of support, and was under the impression that everything about my relationship smelled like roses. In reality it smelled like weed, old cat litter, and Glade air freshener.

“Name a singer better than Freddie Mercury, go on, you can’t!”

“Uh, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Adele…”

“Nope. You’re wrong!”

I muted myself to accommodate him, but my gut would sting every time I backed down. I found It was easier to agree because it meant less chaos, which I had had enough of. The more I did this, the more I failed to pay attention to my body. I pretended nothing was wrong, I ignored what my body was trying to tell me, and instead began loathing it for its shortcomings.

My Mom had spent the last couple of years going haywire with her drinking and after crushing my Dad’s finances in the divorce, she picked up and left, moving on quickly by creating a new family sans us. My Dad was struggling; he had settled in the divorce by taking on a large sum of debt that my Mom created, and he now had four kids to worry about. Each of us kids sat with our new reality in our own ways. I was depressed and anxiety ridden, but there was nobody to help me understand what had happened.

Instead, I let myself be consumed by a guy who I had allowed to take full reign of our relationship. I was depressed, and I felt bad about myself. I couldn’t think or articulate my feelings properly, I didn’t know where to start, and my gut took it all on with digestive issues, and never ending cystic acne, which only ignited the cycle of low self esteem.I was mourning the loss of my mom, who I thought would always be there for me. Reeling for her to come back, I used my body to pretend I was a human while my mind was far away.

A year into this atomic relationship my sister was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Her diagnosis finally shook up my core. My Mom was still out of our lives, incapable of being a Mother to us, and my sister wanted her to stay far away while she began Chemotherapy. When my birthday rolled around, my family was months into grappling with my sister’s diagnosis, so my boyfriend, and I decided to get away to Niagara Falls for the weekend. I remember how physically weak I felt. I was anxiety ridden, having barely slept or eaten. I had developed cysts on my ovaries, I had lost about fifteen pounds, and my skin was horribly broken out. My self-esteem was at an all time low. Looking back, it’s hard to believe I never saw a real problem with my health.

We got to the hotel after a huge argument and all I wanted to do was sleep. At some point we were talking about a visit with his family, who lived a few hours away, and I asked what his family said when he had told them of my sister’s diagnosis. “Oh, well, I didn’t tell them yet. I figured I’d wait until I saw them in person in a few months or something.” He said it so casually, like I was an idiot for asking. I was beyond confused. Wasn’t this a big deal? My gut twisted tighter and tighter. But sometimes he appeared to be incredibly caring. He brought over medicated cookies, and rolled joints for my sister after her chemotherapy sessions. I’d remember when I took a puff from a big blunt at a concert and started spiralling with paranoia. I asked him if he could call my Dad because I thought I had just smoked crystal meth. He comforted me, “It’s just weed Camille, don’t worry.” He kindly took care of me and safely got me home. Looking back, I realize weed was his love language and he spoke it well. Those moments of kindness kept me going in the relationship as they seemed to outweigh the toxicity.

One day I was in a solemn mood and he asked, “What’s your problem? You’re acting weird? Is it because your sister’s sick? I don’t buy it.” I knew how these arguments played out: he would tell me I was wrong for whatever I was feeling. But this time it was different; I didn’t care what he thought when I replied, “Yeah actually, it does have to do with my sister. There is a lot going on right now and I’m not feeling great.” I walked out.

I sat down with my Dad and youngest sister and told them how bad things had gotten. Feeling their support and love gave me the confidence to make a change. I tried my best to break up with him in person, but he eventually talked me out of it. A couple of weeks later things got much worse, so I broke up with him on the phone. I left my phone in my room while my Dad and I watched a movie together in the living room. I got multiple text messages from him and finally answered his calls because he wouldn’t stop calling. He berated me for breaking up with him on the phone.

Before this all happened I was selected to perform for a comedy showcase. I showed up alone, rattled, and nervous. He was there. Even when we were still together he said he wasn’t coming. Why was he there now? I was angry and my set was a disastrous mess. Afterwards, I walked over and asked him why he was there. He scoffed and told me he was there for a buddy that was showcasing. We walked away from the crowded door as he said, “You’re going to be fine, and I’m not. You’re going to find someone, and I’ll find some random girl who likes to smoke weed.” All too familiarly I felt the need to take care of his feelings. He sat in his friend’s car crying as I stood there feeling guilt and confusion. We got back together later that week. In that time I remember him telling me “If we ever break up, and you talk about me on stage…” He then did a physical act out of digging a grave.

Two weeks later, it was the last night that we were together and my body acted out what a mess the relationship was. My body seemed to be trying to tell me all along, but I never listened. It’s like my body was saying,“jeez, do I need to spell it out for you Camille?”I repeatedly endured an orchestra of diarrhea the entire night. I made at least fifty trips back and forth from bed to washroom, bed to washroom. I never saw him again. He stopped responding to my messages. We didn’t break up, I was ghosted. He texted me, “What a beautiful sunny day it is, I hope you get to enjoy it! I’ve left your things in a bag for whenever you can pick them up .”
I picked them up, half expecting some sort of conversation to bookend the relationship, or maybe even another discussion about his love of weather talk. All I found was a bag of my underwear, pyjamas, and coconut oil. I wondered if he needed to be in control so badly that he got back together with me just so he could have the last say.

If you asked me then what I learned from that relationship, I wouldn’t really have an answer because I was left feeling angry, betrayed, and disjointed. Once I started removing anything that no longer served me, my body started healing and I don’t think that’s just a coincidence. If you asked me now I’d tell you I learned about the importance of listening to my gut. I learned the deep console of emotional support, the ability to forgive, and listen to my body as it may know things before I do. I learned that forgiveness is not about the person I need to forgive, forgiveness is for myself.

I had to mourn my Mother, that was never really there for me, and mourn myself, the little girl that was silenced in an attempt to control the chaos. The little girl who silenced herself to be loved. I needed to forgive the little girl who kept showing up in me, and tell her that I was here to listen…finally. Now, I was here to take care of her.

Now I stand on the edge of thirty, the latter of my twenties deeply instilling the growth that I desperately needed to go through, my Mom being the greatest teacher for setting boundaries and those I’ve dated for listening to my body. I’ve learned how to start expressing myself and have compassion and take accountability, for the version of myself that couldn’t. I stand strong in my understanding of unconditional love which was much different to what I was used to. I feel the privilege to be able to share that with people and try not to take it for granted.

Camille Côté spent her early years growing up in Winnipeg with her family, eventually moving to Toronto where she grew into her love for stand up comedy. Camille started out in creating and strengthening her craft as a comedian, storyteller, producer in Toronto. Camille has expanded into developing and writing short stories where she continues to grow her voice as a storyteller in written form. Camille’s most prized success is her highly acclaimed stand-up comedy show production “Parental Discretion Advised.” Camille melded her love of family, sociology, and stand-up comedy together for hugely growing and successful comedy show featuring Toronto’s most talented comedians and their parents at Comedy Bar. Parental Discretion Comedy how has been featured on CBC radio one “Now or Never”, She Does The City, Blog TO, Now Magazine, and Snapd Toronto. Her Instagram is @coteandscarf.

Finances are about far more than one’s standard of living. They mean more than just having the luxury of going out and buying that designer handbag you’ve had your eye on or making sure you’re getting around town in a truly tricked-out ride.

Financial issues are, fundamentally, a matter of social justice. And, increasingly, they’re linked to overall quality of life. Economic disparities are being linked to health disparities. This includes not only inequities in access to and the quality of physical healthcare, but also significant discrepancies in mental health and healthcare.

Research shows the problem is particularly severe for women, and specifically for IBPOC (Indigenous, Black and People of Colour) women, those in the LGBTQ+ community, and those contending with disabilities. Oftentimes the links between financial stress, mental illness, and gender are inextricable and complicated by discrepancies between the rising cost of living and real estate and the refusal of local employers to pay nationally competitive wages; this is especially true in more politically conservative and right-to-work states. Additionally, these issues often reflect broader systemic inequities of gender identity, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and ableism.

Finances and Mental Health

The link between money and mental health likely comes as no surprise. After all, finances are a leading cause of stress, and stress is a prime contributor to other mental health challenges, such as anxiety and depression.

However, studies show that the connection between financial worries and mental illness may run far deeper than many people realize, especially for women. Those who are facing two or more serious financial worries, for example, are at a significantly higher risk of severe psychological distress such as clinical depression, anxiety disorders, and even symptoms related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In the face of such persistent anxiety women may withdraw or self-isolate. Guilt, fear, and shame may lead them to withdraw from friends and loved ones, which only worsens the situation. Studies show the time spent with your support system is by far the best relief from stress and anxiety. But when you are facing financial worries socializing is often the last thing you want to do.

The Connection to Gender

It may seem that money matters and its connection to mental health would know no gender but there is mounting evidence to the contrary. Significant gender pay disparities persist, with white women earning on average only 81% of what men in equivalent job roles do. This initial pay discrepancy ratio applies primarily to white women in the U.S., with further reductions for IBPOC and other intersectionalities. For example, invisible disabilities like mental health conditions, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or traumatic brain injury (TBI) can also impact the gender pay gap since these types of conditions are often discovered late, if at all. As noted by Marianne Eloise in a recent New York Times Op-Ed this can be particularly true for women and ASD: “Such a late diagnosis might seem unusual, but it isn’t actually that rare — especially for women. For a long time, it was dangerously assumed that we couldn’t even be autistic. Research now shows that autism in women is diagnosed both later than in men and much less often. That doesn’t mean fewer of us are autistic. It just means we’re overlooked.”

Pay inequality not only contributes to significant anxiety about making ends meet from month to month, but it also deprives women of a sense of future security. Pay disparities increase the difficulty women face in saving for large expenses, such as retirement or college tuition. Likewise, the lack of savings means women are living and often raising families with no safety net - nothing to fall back on in the event of an emergency from an illness or injury - leading to medical expenses or missed workdays. Even the most ordinary challenges (such as your car breaking down or a major appliance malfunctioning) can become a crisis when a hefty repair bill makes it impossible to pay your bills for the month.

Unfortunately, too many women are forced to bear the burden of finance-related mental illness alone. That’s because economic stressors are rarely, if ever, recognized as a leading contributor to women’s psychological distress. Instead, the mental healthcare system continues to absorb women into the medical model. The standard traditional healthcare model of Westernized medicine approaches mental illnesses principally as physiological diseases, with little or no consideration of the social factors, including systemic inequalities that give rise to women’s psychological distress.

An Unjust System?

Women’s financial distress and its connection to mental illness are not rooted in the gender pay gap alone. Economic disparities are far more subtle and pervasive. For example, women are more likely than men to experience under-employment. A rate that often increases with other intersectionalities. Meaning that women, particularly IBPOC women, are disproportionately represented in the ranks of part-time, temporary, and contract workers. Thus, they are also less likely to enjoy the benefits usually reserved for full-time employees, from health insurance and retirement plans to paid time off and family and medical leave.

In addition to the relative lack of access to full-time work, women are also woefully underrepresented in management and leadership roles. This dearth of female voices in key decision-making roles only serves to perpetuate the professional and financial inequities all women face, especially as more “masculine” approaches to leadership persist as the supposed “norm.”

Such approaches are often predicated on the idea that women are vulnerable to significant career disruptions due to the possibility that they have, or will want to have, children. From this premise extends the idea that women who become mothers will be less committed to their work, less “loyal” and focused, and less productive. Of course, this ignores the reality that male employees are also often parents.

Even more troubling, it forecloses any opportunity for workplace innovation, such as flexible work options, ranging from flex time to telecommuting opportunities, for those who need or want them. Not only do such rigid models of how and where work can be done limit career opportunities for many women with children, but it also closes the door to financial security for others, such as employees who have chronic illnesses or disabilities.

A Lack of Training

One of the most significant causes of economic disparities for IBPOC women is the relative lack of access to academic training in general and financial education in particular. Black and Hispanic women are far less likely than white men to earn bachelor’s degrees in high-paying STEM fields such as engineering. However, even when they do they often bump up against the proverbial glass ceiling and find themselves being taken less seriously than their male colleagues, paid less, or otherwise funneled into more stereotypically “female” roles.

The status quo of male networks of power in IT and tech industry hubs, such as what has been well-documented in places like Silicon Valley or the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan region, can often make it almost impossible to command respect. The fact that Sheryl Sandburg’s “Lean In” TED talk’s now-famous advice has been so vociferously critiqued is sign enough that the “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality only goes so far when you’re taken less seriously than your male colleagues simply by virtue of the fact that you identify as a woman.

Beyond the discrepancies in higher education young people are often reaching adulthood with precious little financial education. Few students graduate high school or even college equipped with an understanding of debt and credit but making a household budget and sticking to it is the gateway to better money management. It’s not the end-all, be-all, but it’s a start.

Helping young women learn to take control of their finances can be a profound boost in confidence. When women know how to engage in positive self-talk (and when they have specific financial goals and achievements) to include in these affirmations, not only will their mental health improve, but so will their financial wellbeing.

The Takeaway

Financial worries are more than just discomforting. They can also be dangerous, resulting in severe mental health challenges. For women, and particularly for IBPOC and marginalized women, economic disparities may feel almost inescapable. More high schools and colleges need to address the fundamental lack of access to financial education and training by adding foundational requirements on unpacking the status quo and the invisible structures put into place to keep women from accessing the resources needed for reaching the C-suite.

How should U.S. society begin to work towards employment equality, while also considering the difference between equality and equity? What factors must we examine and unpack in order for women to enjoy mental and financial health? Perhaps there needs to be more wide-scale journalistic coverage of corporate accountability (or lack of, thereof) to help prevent blatant gender-based discrimination in the workplace.

Human resource departments should offer improved opportunities for continuing education, research and development, as well as discussing the need for woman-owned venture capital sponsorship and entrepreneurial training. The recent Trump administration’s removal of grant funding for employers who implement diversity and inclusion training is just one example of the many roll-backs of small incremental progress that has been made nation-wide over the past few decades.

With more open discussion, transparency, education, training - as well as increased national support for unionization, diversity, inclusion, and equity - women may eventually begin to more fully enjoy the mental and financial health they deserve. However, as long as individual states are allowed to openly discriminate against women, IBPOC, and other historically disadvantaged groups the lack of a common starting point for eliminating the pay gap will continue.

Ainsley Lawrence is a freelance writer who loves to talk about good health, balanced life, and better living through self-awareness and grit. She is frequently lost in a mystery podcast or on the hunt for the best mac n cheese in town.

Illustration by Saul Freedman-Lawson

I tried going vegan for the first and only time in the winter of 2019, which corresponded with the onset of my eating disorder. Within days, I was compulsively restricting my eating – even of non-meat products – and within weeks, I was hardly eating anything at all.

According to Alida Iacobellis, a registered dietitian, research has shown that “52 percent of individuals with a history of disordered eating have also been vegetarian at some point in their lifetime, compared to only 12 percent of those who do not have a history of disordered eating.” (This study included vegans along with vegetarians, but whether vegans are at higher risk for eating disorders remains inconclusive.) It’s a classic chicken and egg problem: are vegetarian diets a risk factor for disordered eating, or – and research strongly favours this option – do those at risk of eating disorders gravitate towards vegetarian diets?

We often assign food positive or negative connotations: salads are “good,” while pizza is “bad.” In vegetarian circles or among those with disordered eating, this idea of food “purity” or food moralism is even more potent. It becomes difficult to separate ethical eating from disordered eating when you focus on food as the source of your “goodness.” This kind of thinking can lead to problematic beliefs, like the idea that overeating is immoral, along with dangerous behaviours, like food restriction.

Looking back, I recognize that my vegan diet did not cause my eating disorder at all; in fact, the opposite was true. My veganism was short-lived, lasting only a week or two. This was partially because my eating disorder included binges, in which I compulsively ate whatever was available without considering whether or not it used to have a face. More importantly, however, my reasons for attempting a vegan diet had little to do with ethics. In truth, I had been routinely restricting food and skipping meals for months, and a vegan diet meant that I could cut calories without drawing suspicion.

Registered dietitian Emily Tam confirms that disordered eating often precedes the choice to go vegetarian. She says, “In my experience, transitioning to a semi-vegetarian or vegetarian diet is a way for people with eating disorders to avoid eating foods that they think are too high in calories and fat. As there are numerous socially acceptable and valid reasons for vegetarianism, it’s easy for someone experiencing an eating disorder to claim that their avoidance of these foods is due to these reasons and hide that they’re actually motivated by a desire to control their intake and their weight.”

Those suffering from eating disorders often feel compelled to exert control over their weight and diet, often through harmful habits such as binging and purging. Vegetarianism works as a valid excuse for micromanaging one’s food choices in public. For myself, veganism allowed me to exert control over my diet in a way that was perceived as laudable rather than dysfunctional.

Consider your motivations

A year after recovery – a long process of unlearning my association between my weight and my worth and relearning normal eating habits – I’m beginning to feel that same urge to cut meat out of my diet. But this time, my motivation is to eat ethically rather than lose weight. A host of factors led me to this, such as the pandemic’s exposure of the horrors within the meat industry, including labour abuses at meat processing facilities and animal rights abuses on factory farms.

As part of this continuing journey, I’ve decided to consume significantly less meat with the hope that one day I’ll be able to go completely vegetarian. I decided that my current model of semi-vegetarianism should be lenient and compassionate. For example, I allow myself social meat-eating on weekends. I am also careful to ensure cutting meat out of a meal doesn’t change the amount I’m eating. Yet, I can already feel my internal alarms going off – because despite my good intentions, I can’t avoid the fact that I’m deliberately restricting my diet.

Part of me remains skeptical of my motivation. Is the eating disordered part of me dormant but lurking, conjuring up a sudden devotion to vegetarianism as an excuse to diet in a socially acceptable way? On the other hand, I believe that the food choices we make daily are essential for enacting social and environmental change – food production accounts for 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and more than half of these emissions are caused by animal agriculture. So how can I resolve this tension between truly wanting to eat ethically, but also not wanting to feel triggered at every meatless meal?

Iacobellis reassures me, saying, “It’s possible to find a middle path and strike a balance when it comes to honouring your health and respecting animals and the environment while maintaining some flexibility with eating.”

Before committing to any dietary changes, Tam advises that you should consider why you want to be vegetarian. She says, “Are you hoping that eating a vegetarian diet will help you control your weight or shape? Do you think that becoming a vegetarian will make you a more valuable human being? If your answer to either of these questions is ‘yes,’ vegetarianism might not be healthy for you, at least not right now.”

Find your personal ethics

Personally, I have found it useful to reflect on what eating “ethically” means to me. This allows me to explore possible ethical alternatives to vegetarianism so that I can continue to eat some meat. For example, I realized that I don’t believe that eating animals is necessarily unethical, but that I’m strongly opposed to factory farming. In an effort to facilitate this belief, I can seek out butchers who offer meat grown on local, sustainable farms.

I’ve also realized that I’m more interested in supporting human rights within the meat industry than animal rights. This means I can broaden my focus away from simply meat and consider whether the non-meat I consume is produced ethically. Another of my concerns is with the meat industry’s impact on the climate crisis. A non-vegetarian solution could be to switch out meat products linked to high greenhouse gas emissions, like beef, for other, more sustainable meat products, such as kangaroo meat – which I was pleasantly surprised to learn is available at my local butcher. These solutions certainly won’t work for everyone, but it’s important to consider what truly matters to you, and what supports your health and body at this stage of your recovery. If accessible to you, working with a dietitian or nutritionist may be helpful when planning an ethical diet tailored to you, as can speaking to a therapist about your motivations for going vegetarian.

Focus on your health

No matter what dietary choices you’re making, it’s important to prioritize health. Tam emphasizes that vegetarian diets don’t always work for everyone with an eating disorder history. The energy needs of those who are both recovering from an eating disorder and who are still growing are particularly high, for example. Therefore, Tam says, some youth will likely find it “challenging to meet their needs without flexibility, allowing for animal-based foods to be part of their diet.” Similarly, Iacobellis recommends that, especially for youth, “if you are able and willing to include at least one of either dairy, eggs or seafood, it will be easier to maintain health.”

Remember that this maintenance includes your mental health. Choosing a vegetarian, and especially a vegan diet, will require that you carefully plan your meals in order to ensure you’re getting enough protein and calories, which may feel similar to calorie counting. I knew that this might be triggering for me, which is why I chose to take steps to becoming a full vegetarian, at least until I feel more stable in my recovery.

But, I can’t lie: many of my favourite meals are meat-based, and consciously omitting them from my diet feels a lot like restriction. I’ve begun seeking out creative, tasty vegetarian recipes, with the goal of curating a list of vegetarian meals that I genuinely enjoy. Once I learn enough delicious vegetarian recipes, a meatless diet won’t feel like a restriction at all, and soon enough I’ll be craving beans instead of burgers.

Everyone deals differently with eating disorder recovery, however, and while some may find vegetarianism empowering, others may find it impossible. Remember that you can stop at any time, especially if restricting your diet feels triggering or if you notice that you’ve begun to count calories or skip meals. There are plenty of ways to eat ethically and support the causes you’re passionate about without restricting your diet in any way.

That, of course, doesn’t mean it’s easy. The rhetoric of “food purity” in both vegetarian and health discourses is hard to ignore, and I feel the same stab of guilt when I eat meat as when I eat a bag of chips. The fact is, eating meat doesn’t make me “bad” or immoral any more than eating high-calorie foods does. Any food choice I make that improves my mental and physical health – whether it’s choosing to cut down on my meat consumption or to share a turkey dinner with my family at Thanksgiving – is good and ethical. Whereas food-based shame – even if it’s used to support a good cause – is never ethical.

About the Author: Isabel Armiento (she/her) is a writer and student based in Toronto. She is currently working toward her M.A. in English literature at the University of Toronto, and working as a reporter for her school newspaper. Her academic work focuses on representations of the female body and food in literature. In her free time, you can find Isabel writing personal essays and drinking copious amounts of hot chocolate.

Illustration by Marlee Jennings

Hello. Hi. We are still quarantined. And, apparently, very online.

Internet use has skyrocketed during the past nine months, as so much of our work, education, and entertainment is now dependent on whether or not we have Wi-Fi. Honestly, whoever expected me to not be all up in Jason Momoa’s IG in between emails is living in a reality that I don’t yet understand… But, unfortunately, the endless scrolling cycles we’ve found ourselves in have been shown to be TERRIBLE for our mental health. Not because social media is inherently evil, but because it is saturated with unrealistic messages about what our bodies “should” look like, and what kinds of bodies deserve positive attention.

It is no secret that learning to idealize unrealistic bodies — bodies that look nothing like us or anyone we know in real life — takes a toll on our self esteem. According to the 2011 documentary Miss Representation, 53 percent of 13-year-old girls report feeling unhappy with their bodies, and that number rises to a whopping 78 percent by the time they are 17. It is also not a secret that women of colour, specifically, trans women of colour, experience the negative impact of beauty and body standards tenfold because the “ideal” body is pretty much always cis and white. Women of colour are grossly underrepresented throughout social media because what we see we log on is the result of a newsfeed algorithm that simply does not represent the priorities and interests of women of colour.

The importance of representation has been well documented. We know that body positive, racially and culturally diverse images are crucial in our systemically discriminatory society to help create new mindsets relative to beauty, intelligence, and value. We actually need this for our mental health. And when I say body positive images, I don’t mean the type of body positivity that makeup brands and clothing lines appropriate to market their products at the expense of women’s health and self esteem, the type that aggressively excludes trans women of colour. So where is our actual body positive representation? And why do we want it from Instagram?

We are impacted by misrepresentation on social media because we actually create relationships with the content that we look at. We become emotionally invested, partly because we use social media to check in with loved ones, but mostly because social media has been shown to trigger the same receptors in our brain that respond to intense social situations, like being cast out from a community, or needing to react quickly to threats like invasion or war. In a country where 77 percent of the population reported checking social media accounts daily in 2020, and where social media influencers are one of the most used marketing resources, this essentially puts our brains in a position where they don’t actually differentiate between daily, in-person interactions, and what we see in our social media universe. We aren’t just building relationships with our peers online, we are actually building relationships with the accounts we follow — regardless of whether we want to or not — which essentially explains why it is so easy to feel undermined, betrayed, and also personally attacked by pages that post exclusionary and body-shaming content.

It’s not uncommon for brands and accounts to pretend to hop on the inclusivity train, now that it’s a trending topic. It becomes a problem when brands and social media stars market to an emotionally vulnerable audience, but don’t come through. When brands we feel connected to claim to be all about inclusivity, but don’t actually walk the walk, it works like a form of manipulation called gaslighting.

Gaslighting, in a nutshell, is the manipulative practice of deliberately trying to make a person question their perception of reality to the point where they begin to doubt their sanity. While gaslighting is predominantly talked about in the context of abusive intimate relationships, the term has also been applied to some social media behaviours. For example, prank videos on social media often qualify as a form of gaslighting, specifically in cases where the person being pranked did not consent to being the subject of ridicule. This is because the standard practice is to gaslight the person being pranked into thinking that they are “crazy” for being upset, and further humiliating them by taking their reactions out of context on social media.

On a broader scale, the oh-so-common practice of false advertising from influencers and the brands they represent has an alarming amount of things in common with gaslighting. For example, if you follow a super muscular Instagram model who claims she never exercises, that is not necessarily gaslighting. However, if she actually does exercise a lot to look that way, but insists that she doesn’t, you might feel confused and wonder how it’s possible. Worse, you might wonder why your natural body doesn’t look more like the model’s, since you don’t exercise either… Other examples of this include (but are not limited to) self love campaigns that exclusively feature women with a full face of natural-looking makeup, then sport the hashtag #IWokeUpLikeThis. These images are intentionally dishonest; the point is to shame viewers for not being as “effortlessly” flawless as the influencers and models claim to be.

Why do they do this? You guessed it: to sell you something. The beauty industry is worth billions of dollars. The value of the cosmetics market in Canada alone is expected to reach about $15.8 billion (US) by 2021. And while there is nothing wrong with experimenting with makeup — or anything fun and colourful — the statistics for how many women wear makeup because they feel inadequate without it are still staggering in 2020.

Gaslighting is unfortunately everywhere in advertising, to the extent that many of us wouldn’t recognize it if we saw it. Most of us just know that, after scrolling for a while, we feel a little more like something is wrong with us.

I’m in desperate need of a more diverse Instagram feed, where gymming and putting on makeup are supported, but are just a single option in an ocean of possibilities. I want a feed where women who choose to gym and rock the latest makeup and fashion trends are gassed up with the same enthusiasm as women who choose to go into earth goddess mode and never shave their body hair again, where you’re met with a wave of support if you decide to start hormone therapy or choose a new name that fits your identity more — basically, where literally any expression of femininity is met with maximum hype. The way women have been taught to tear each other down does not actually benefit us. If we want to create supportive spaces, our only option is sisterhood — and unfollowing accounts that don’t support our mental health.

One of the best things we can do to improve our body image is to curate our Instagram feeds. How? Repurpose the “search” feature on your social media accounts! Social media can be a great tool to educate and express yourself, if you make your feed a safe space — whatever that means to you. Start by making a list of the types of pages that you might find inspiring and then search for that type of content, instead of letting the algorithm dictate what you see. Be as specific as you can, and edit your list as much as you want to as you search. Narrow down your search as much as possible, then pay attention to your recommended pages. You will need to do a lot of sorting, but trust me, it’s worth it.

As you refine your search, pay attention to social media red flags. The first time I looked up #selflove on IG, I was looking for accounts that had a specific type of ride or die femme-positive vibe. As a Puerto Rican woman who lived in the diaspora for seven years, I was growing really tired of how aggressive white feminism can feel towards women of colour, and how pages that exclude trans women’s stories and realities (often referred to as TERF’s, or “trans exclusionary radical feminist”) can often feel like the norm. The creepily homogeneous wave of posts I encountered as I scrolled through the sea of brand promotions and cishet white faces definitely summoned the rage of my ancestors. What I eventually realized, as an emotional abuse survivor, is that I felt gaslit. By freaking social media.

This is a big deal. For women of colour, be you BIPOC and/or QTPOC, this assault on our mental health is particularly dangerous when we live in societies where hospitals let us die at disproportionate rates, and where our communities are also disproportionately targeted by police. It is well documented that when women with Black-sounding or Spanish names apply for jobs, they are less likely to be considered for hire, which is only one of the reasons that our communities tend to have lower incomes than predominantly white communities. In short: BIPOC/QTPOC women need 0 extra attacks on our mental health.

So as you search, make sure to look out for the following red flags: - Pages that claim to represent BIPOC pride, but only represent light skinned or white-passing women of colour on their feed. Not showing the diversity in our communities contributes to a divisive narrative that gives people other than us the right to define what we look like and how we deserve to be represented. - Pages that don’t show trans, and/or queer women of colour in content about beauty. This literally sends the message that QTPOC cannot represent beauty. - Pages that only show certain body types, but claim BIPOC pride (e.g. only ever seeing one type of Black body on the page’s feed). - Pages that only show beauty and sex appeal in contexts that aren’t actually pleasurable for the model. - Pages that never show Black women in a bonnet, with their natural hair out, or without makeup on. - Pages that promote the idea that BIPOC/QTPOC women can totally just drop their stress levels and focus their energy on becoming a more conventionally acceptable type of beautiful. This is a form of shaming.

Let’s be real: misrepresenting or not representing BIPOC/QTPOC reality, and failing to acknowledge our value and beauty is not just about 2020 social media influencers — our communities have been fighting for the right to exist authentically for centuries. For us, erasure has 500 years of intergenerational baggage, and, in a modern context, makes us feel like our existence in and of itself is revolutionary. While this may sound like a noble concept, it is one of the most exhausting realities in which to exist.

Being a woman of colour in 2020 requires bravery. We are statistically more likely to be on the receiving end of violence, especially if we are trans. We are statistically more likely to be failed by the systems that we live in, because they were not designed for our wellbeing. We are not brave, “spicy” or “sassy” because it’s cute — our survival depends on it.

In this context, learning to love ourselves is also an act of bravery. It takes a lot to get to the point where you can say, “I don’t care what people will think of me tomorrow, I cannot keep apologizing for who I am, or for this body.” But if you are starting a self love journey, you will inspire others to do the same. And yes, curating which pages show up on your Instagram feed is 100 percent an important step forward.

About the Author: Victoria Sagardía Calderón (she/her/hers) is a writer, yoga instructor and trauma specialist from Puerto Rico. Her work focuses on decolonizing self care and conversations about bodies, community, and mental health. She is also a professional dancer and cat mom.

Illustration by Mallory CK Taylor

Niamh McCann is a teenage girl who’s passionate about ballet, the plays of William Shakespeare, the environment and public speaking. In a TED talk she presented in 2018, McCann tells a story about her younger brother: he was diagnosed with autism when he was three and a half years old. Not many may expect that McCann, like her brother, is also autistic but, unlike her brother, was not diagnosed until the age of 14.

Getting a diagnosis wasn’t smooth sailing for McCann. The test was the exact same one her brother took, involving a bag of feathers, thumbtacks, and a book about flying frogs. And her score? A perfect zero. According to that test, Niamh was not autistic.

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence among autistic girls. Many of them receive a late diagnosis, and some may not even be diagnosed at all. Autistic girls are on average diagnosed 1.5 years later than boys, according to a recent study published in the journal, Autism Research.

I myself was diagnosed with autism when I was four. Looking at the report for the test I took, I am surprised at the amount of emphasis on eye contact and play, omitting other factors such as sensory issues and masking, and putting less emphasis on stimming and special interests; these topics that were only given a tiny paragraph on the test.

I was only diagnosed because I displayed symptoms the test was looking for, rather than symptoms most autistic girls and women actually display. This is the reason why McCann and other autistic girls and women are taking to prominent platforms like TED talks: most autism tests are tailored to boys, which results in misdiagnosis in girls. Through sharing their stories, McCann and others hope to raise awareness of the specific issues that autistic girls and women face: misdiagnosis, stereotypes, and discrimination.

Gender discrimination begins at diagnosis. Most people can instantly recognize the stereotypical symptoms of autism — language delays, “meltdowns” (an intense reaction to an overwhelming situation, often mistaken for a tantrum), and aversion to eye contact. However, few may recognize the symptoms of autism that females are more likely to have. These symptoms include:

• Stims, or self-stimulatory behaviour: constant repetition of physical movements, sounds, words or moving objects, such as chewing hair, tapping fingers, and heel raising
• Masking: When an individual changes or “masks” their natural personality to blend in to societal norms. This may result in different people seeing vastly different sides of a person, which could be mistaken for borderline personality disorder.
• Problems with executive functioning: Lack of attention span, difficulty organizing things, procrastination, lack of motivation to do a task
• Special interests: These can be disguised as passions, hobbies or pastimes, such as literature, cooking or fashion.
• Sensory issues: Highly sensitive to bright lights, loud noises and other strong sensations but may not outwardly express discomfort
• Difficulty in understanding figurative language: Unable to understand idioms, irony and sarcasm
• Other disabilities: Many autistic females are identified with mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder, before they are diagnosed with autism.

Many girls are not diagnosed early because the people around them fail to recognize these little-known symptoms, many of which could be dismissed as “typical” for girls. For example, an autistic boy’s head-banging or arm flapping would raise more flags than an autistic girl’s nail biting.

In addition, tests to diagnose autism often miss out on these symptoms in favour of traditional ideas about the “extreme male brain.” This theory is based on the assumption that male brains are better at systemizing than empathizing, and that female brains are the opposite. Autism causes the extreme version of the “male brain” in autistic people. The tests that follow the “extreme male brain” theory primarily focus on facial expressions, basic social interaction, and obscure obsessions such as trains and flying frogs, like the test McCann took. The focus on childlike social interaction becomes even more problematic when the same diagnosis tests are performed on much older women, who likely do not enjoy playing with toys anymore.

Misdiagnosis is just the beginning. Stereotypes about autism erase autistic girls’ and women’s experiences and perpetuate stigma. Many people picture an autistic person as a young boy who dislikes social interaction and has frequent meltdowns, and think this applies to all autistic people. This stereotype can result in backhanded compliments, like “you don’t look autistic” or “you look really normal,” which erases autistic girls’ and women’s experiences and identity. Further, some people will distance themselves from autistic girls and women, because stereotypes tell them that we are “robots” who cannot feel empathy, let alone understand our own feelings.

The media, such as the movie Rain Man (1988)and the television series The Good Doctor (2017-), have perpetuated another common stereotype: that autistic people are good at mathematics, science, and computer technologies. These are already labelled as “masculine” interests and activities, which helps to “confirm” the assumption that only boys are autistic, and further erase autistic girls’ and women’s experiences.

Thinking about autism as a spectrum can help avoid stereotyping. It’s called a spectrum for a reason: it is difficult to fully differentiate from different levels of severity, and instead, each and every autistic individual has a few symptoms from a wide, diverse list, and every autistic experience is different. As Dr. Stephen Shore, autistic professor of special education at Adelphi University says, “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.”

Beyond misdiagnosis and stereotyping, autistic girls and women can face additional challenges due to economic barriers, racism, and more. Autistic people from low-income families are less likely to be able to afford diagnosis tests or therapy. While applied behaviour analysis (ABA) has earned criticism from the autistic community for being misguided and even cruel, it is the most widely approved and, therefore, the most widely covered by insurance autism therapy in the U.S.. Many other therapies have been developed in recent years, but are not covered by most insurance plans, leaving many families with few options. One insurance company in Singapore offers a policy called SpecialCare (Autisim), but the high cost of this policy offers low coverage, and implies that autistic people are at a higher health risk than smokers. A lack of insurance exacerbates the financial burden on families with autistic family members, and shows the underlying systemic discrimination against autistic people and, to an extent, the disabled community in general.

Other social inequalities also impact autistic girls and women. Because of systemic racism, Black autistic girls are more likely to come from low-income backgrounds and have a lack of access to health services. Plus, when public service providers interact with Black autistic people, subconscious racism and prejudice causes them to be ignored, or worse. Black autistic girls and women may face added pressure to “disguise” their autism due to the common stereotype that Black girls and women are always stronger and tougher than white girls and women. This can cause extreme stress and anxiety, and they may be fearful of disclosing their autism to the people around them for fear of being shunned.

This also applies to other people of colour. Latina or Hispanic autistic girls and women may come from low-income families, too, resulting in a lack of access to health services in countries without affordable healthcare, like the United States. Additionally, Hispanic autistic people are less likely to be properly diagnosed in the U.S. because of language and cultural barriers. In the state of California, which has the highest population of Hispanic children, only 29% of doctors provide diagnosis tests in Spanish.

In Asian communities, autism isn’t a frequently discussed topic. The idea of “saving face”, or avoiding shame, is prominent in most Asian cultures and it is viewed as “disgraceful” to openly discuss disability in public. Many Asian families have high expectations for their daughters and dismiss autism as “bad parenting”, or regard the subject as “taboo”. One Asian-American parent of an autistic child recounted how she was criticized, ridiculed and shunned by other Asian-American parents for candidly bringing up autism. She was surprised that many Asians from Generation X — and even Millennials — knew little about the condition, and had never encountered an Asian autistic child. Even when Asian children are diagnosed, less than one percent of them receive extra help and guidance for their autism.

Misdiagnosis, stereotypes, and discrimination can have negative effects on autistic girls’ and women’s mental health. Due to social anxiety and the frustrating inability to express their feelings accurately, autistic people may find it difficult to confide in anyone. According to researchers from the A.J. Drexel Institute of Autism, about 70% of autistic people have at least one, if not multiple, mental health conditions, such as social anxiety and depression. When these go undiagnosed, they may affect an autistic female’s daily life. Autistic females may isolate themselves, avoid expressing their opinions, self-harm, and have suicidal thoughts — one recent study found that more than half of women with autistic traits reported having suicidal thoughts. Even their physical health may be affected, causing an increase in headaches and stomach upsets.

Autistic girls’ and women’s poor mental and physical health can also be exacerbated by abuse. In a 2018 study, autistic girls were found to be three times more likely to suffer from sexual abuse than neurotypical girls — meaning girls who do not have any neurodevelopmental differences (such as autism and A.D.H.D.). In one blog, an autistic person wrote about living through abuse as a child, and said he had low self-esteem, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result.

It’s important that we spread awareness about these issues faced by autistic girls and women. It is estimated that about one in one hundred people are autistic; you may be autistic, or it’s likely that someone close to you, such as a family member or friend, is autistic. We need to advocate for more accurate diagnosis, combat stereotypes, increase access to resources, and call out racism so that autistic girls and women can shine.

About the Author: Lucinda Thee (she/her) is a young writer in Singapore who is the youngest finalist in New Zealand’s NFFD Youth Competition 2020 and has been published in Overachiever Magazine, BAZOOF! and Skipping Stones. She is also a writer for websites such as Gen Z Writes and Plastic-Lite SG. Being autistic with mild scoliosis, she is passionate about writing about disability hot topics. She is currently addicted to puzzle-solving and website building.

Illustration by Marlee Jennings

“When the shutdown happened, things moved online in like a day. I swear I woke up and I was like, ‘there’s live streams happening.’” Heath V. Salazar, a non-binary Drag King who performs as Gay Jesus, noticed right away how rapidly drag performance moved online when the pandemic hit in March. Drag in Canada has since been able to maintain a consistent and growing online presence, and is thriving despite the inability to hold in-person performances. What makes drag uniquely adaptable to a pandemic? In chatting with Salazar and Eli Holliday, a Drag Thing who performs as Dank Sinatra, I got to hear their answers to the question of pandemic drag, as well as talk more about their experiences with online drag and how some Canadian drag performers are working to expose audiences to a more diverse range of gender performers than you might see on an episode of Canada’s Drag Race.

For any of us who haven’t been tuning in to online drag, let me quickly answer the question – what even is drag? Drag is a queer performance that plays with gender conventions and ultimately critiques the notion of fixed or ‘real’ genders entirely. In other words, by performing gender in different ways, drag artists remind us that all gender is really only a performance. Drag artists identify in various different ways including, but not limited to, Drag Queens, Drag Kings, or Drag Things (a term that emphasizes a non-binary approach to drag). Ultimately, drag consists of folx whose performances emphasize the fluidity and expansiveness of gender itself.

Gay Jesus, photo taken by Sly Pereira

Drag has been around for centuries – the first recorded instance of a woman performing on stage dressed as a man, for example, occurred during the Tang Dynasty in China between 618-908 AD. It also has often had to adapt to changing societal conventions and norms. One example from more recent history is the 1930s “Pansy Craze”, a period where some drag performers were popular and accepted enough to be starring in Hollywood movies. However, in 1934 Hollywood started enforcing the “Hays Code”, a moral code for movies that censored anything ‘illicit’ and was used to ban drag from motion pictures. While Canada didn’t have any equivalent code, provincial governments generally banned drag content from movies at the time as well. Drag had to go deeper underground, and didn’t emerge into broad public view again until the 1960s and 70s.

The coronavirus pandemic has been another adjustment, and Salazar and Holliday have moved their drag practices completely online. Salazar did their first live streamed drag shortly after the pandemic hit and remembers being “freaked out” – but now, Salazar regularly does drag online and has been making pre-recorded drag videos that incorporate their own poetry. Holliday also was totally new to online drag, but simply began embracing online opportunities when it became clear that they were the only option. Now, Holliday co-produces a weekly online drag show called Category Is and frequently appears in the growing number of other drag shows online.

Both Holliday and Salazar credit drag’s long history of adaptation and perseverance when they talk about why drag has been able to weather the pandemic. “We’re in a particularly unique moment and people are really interested in talking about drag and thinking about drag and thinking about those histories”, says Holliday, continuing that they “hope that and believe that the histories of queer community and drag community resilience have impacted” drag’s ability to adapt to the pandemic. Salazar, similarly, reminds us that “this isn’t our first pandemic as queer people”, and says that “one of the things that [they] really cherish about drag is that it is a practice that has been happening for so long and in such different ways within a bunch of different cultures.”

More than that, this history of drag is not only drag performance itself but the history of queer community and connection. Holliday talked about the role that isolation often plays in the lives of queer folx, and the experience many people have of growing up and experiencing their queerness in isolation before finding a community. For them, the pandemic is “an interesting time to think about queer isolation and what new things we can offer to people who feel isolated and people who have to isolate.”

The move to predominantly online drag, in Salazar’s view, has even made possible different kinds of community connection. A latinx king themselves, being online has allowed them to meet other Latinx kings in the US – “it never would have occurred to be to meet kings online, and we have a supportive community now”. It also allows audience members to get more involved in the community, says Salazar, citing online panels and discussion groups about drag as places where “people who typically don’t get to engage with the drag performers in their community got to just like have a conversation or ask a question.”

Dank Sinatra, photo taken by Eirik Hutchinson

Online drag has also been offering the queer community relief from the stress of the pandemic by just “giving people like a really escapist entertainment …like stupid, campy, silly entertainment. It’s just people being fucking clowns and letting you laugh at it and people are desperate for that,” says Holliday. Salazar also talks about how drag performers, as community leaders, “immediately stepped into a position where they were bringing people joy in a time that was very stressful”. As a reprieve from stress and isolation, online drag has been a venue for queer community to continue to come together and be joyful and campy and silly, regardless of outside circumstances.

While drag had been moving online and onto streaming platforms in Canada even before the pandemic, this latest wave of online drag has the potential to offer a more diverse range of gender performers. Certainly, shows like Canada’s Drag Race, which aired this summer, can be credited with exposing many folx to drag for the first time. But Rupaul’s Drag Race generally tends to feature almost exclusively Drag Queens, and other kinds of gender performers like Drag Kings and Drag Things are often marginalized even in the midst of drag’s current popularity. However, Salazar notes that with the influx of online drag, “people are finding the option to be able to find drag that fits for them. “The amount of people who were like, “I didn’t know drag kings were a thing” and were like, “I wanna be a drag king”” after watching Salazar’s online performances reminded them that people haven’t always known which other kinds of drag are out there. Holliday is hopeful about this as well. “If you’re trying to seek out drag performances online actively then anyone who’s trying to do that is in a better position to find performers of all kinds…but I think there has to be like a desire and also maybe some inkling that there are other things to find”, they say, hoping that popular Drag Queens will take the initiative in bringing more exposure to Drag Kings and Drag Things.

Online drag also has the potential to increase accessibility for audiences and performers generally. Salazar emphasizes that online drag is available for folx who are at home sick, working in hospitals, or taking care of their families. “So many people gave feedback that they’ve really enjoyed the fact that they can now just log into a show”, they said. Additionally, Salazar notes that online drag has been “an incredible equalizer” in terms of budgets – since everyone is now at home and “all just working with what [they] had”, any pressure to need expensive costumes or props is lessened.

“Drag is something that people have been doing in their bedrooms forever,” says Holliday, and now more than ever performers and audiences can engage with drag even when they’re isolated. There are tons of great places to find Canadian drag online these days!

Category is, co-hosted and co-produced by Holliday alongside drag performer Ocean Giovanni, airs every Friday at 7pm EST on http://twitch.tv/thehouseroyale and features a rotating cast of drag performers, and even monthly Open Stage nights which make room for folx who are new to the drag world. Salazar, as Gay Jesus, was featured in CBC’s Canada’s A Drag, which aired before the pandemic and profiled drag performers from all across the country. It remains available online at CBC Gem. You can also follow Eli Holliday at @dank.is.a.drag and Heath V. Salazar at @theirholiness on Instagram to keep updated on their upcoming performances.

About the author: Maighdlin Mahoney(she/her) is a writer with a background in theatre creation, production, and performance. As a writer, her interest is in writing non-fiction and fiction that interrogate the stories we tell about our pasts and ourselves, as well as the effect that these stories have on how we understand our world and one another. She was a co-producer, co-creator, and actor in Nasty, a feminist exploration of history, which appeared in the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival and the 2018 Feminist Fuck It Fest. She is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto, where she received an Honours Bachelor Degree with a double major in English Literature and History.

Illustration by Ki Chin

To those who have painted my world orange:

I remember in like, fifth or sixth grade, my “aesthetic” (if you could call it that) was all pastel – as were most of the middle-schoolers with a Tumblr and a “donut talk to me shirt” (I know you know which one I’m talking about). I painted my nails with dull violets and yellows, and chose a light periwinkle for my walls.

Looking back, the pale tones seem like a symptom of settling for a pale way of life. Maybe I was. Actually, I know I was. Those I chose to be around back then spoke to me in muted tones, persistently painting me as grey until I saw it, too. Like when you’re in a museum, and the self-proclaimed “art connoisseur” next to you drones on about how the contrasts between the shapes on the canvas represent the endless war between mankind, or something like that, and you know it’s pretentious, but accept it anyway because why would you know any better than this person who clearly has credibility? It was like that. But now I do know better. Because now I know You.

You, who pulled my chin up and righted my posture, even when I rolled my eyes (shoulders in your back pockets, Ruby!). You, who let me take up space with laughs and anger and tears and dance parties, who spoon-fed me comfort until my figure filled. You, who used Your hands to guide my arms around my own body until I learned how to embrace on my own. You, who French braided strength into my hair, over and over, until it seeped into the roots and thickened the strands. You, who sang trust into me as we sailed down the freeway at speeds far past the legal limit with an inattentiveness that I should definitely not make a habit. You, who has gifted me poetry and essays and rambling letters like this one. Now, because of You, my world is glaringly vibrant, so vibrant that, sometimes, I fear for my sight. Sometimes, I want to retreat back into my old faded bubble; there’s less risk when everything has already lost its colour.

I have made a habit of this: when it feels like the world is rotating a bit too fast or when I am stuck, spinning in the whirlpool that is my brain (or, less poetically, when nothing goes how I had planned due to a pandemic), I grab my black pen and I draw myself a box, like Harold and his Purple Crayon but with less adventure. And I don’t let You in, because I’m scared to lose and because I crave control – an equation that will always result in a negative. But You remind me: that’s not a sustainable way to live. You take my hand (maybe sometimes begrudgingly) and bring me outside. You say, look how beautiful it all is! You say, look at the different shades of the sky and the trees and the flowers and all that cliché shit that is cliché because it really is true. I think about You a lot. And in month seven of this “new normal” (ugh), I miss You.

Sometimes it feels like the six feet between us holds every bit of our old life: evenings full of guests crowded into our living room, singing an out-of-tune harmony, weekends spent defiantly sipping from a shared can of beer and feigning adulthood, the late night prospect of spontaneity, early mornings at school – and if I could just put my head on your shoulder we could get that fairytale back. Maybe if I could just take off my mask and whisper something stupid into Your ear, without the fear of contaminated words, everything would be fixed. But I know that isn’t how the virus works.

If there is anything that this forced separation has taught me, it’s that I am lucky to hurt, because it means I have someone to miss. As pervasive as that familiar fear of loss is, I am grateful to have something to lose. So wherever You are, I hope that you feel my hands on your shoulders – pulling them into your back pockets – so You can colour someone else’s world just like You have coloured mine. I know my paintbrush is small, and the tones are a little paler than I’d like, but I’ll keep practicing, and I hope I can make Your day (and maybe Your month? Your year?) just a little more colourful.

About the Author: Ruby Condon (she/her/hers) is a student in Los Angeles, CA. She enjoys writing poetry and creative-non-fiction, and hopes to study psychology on her way to becoming an adolescent therapist. In her free time you can find her scream-singing songs from her childhood with her friends or daydreaming about living in an uncomfortably small apartment in New York, subsisting off of peanut butter sandwiches and true crime podcasts.

Illustration: Saul Freedman-Lawson

Shameless is an independent Canadian voice for smart, strong, sassy young women and gender expansive youth, covering issues that matter since 2004! It’s a fresh alternative to typical teen magazines, packed with articles about arts, culture and current events, reflecting the neglected diversity of our readers’ interests and experiences. Grounded in principles of social justice and anti-oppression, Shameless aims to do more than just publish a magazine: we aim to inspire, inform, and advocate for young women and gender expansive youth.

The 2021 Conference: Feminist Media as Social Justice

Shameless is thrilled to announce we will host the our second annual Talking Back Feminist Media Conference online on March 13-14, 2021. This conference is funded by the Toronto Arts Council.

The conference theme is Feminist Media as Social Justice. This will be a space to collaborate, co-create, imagine, celebrate, scheme and dream about the radical potential of feminist media as it relates to building a better, more just world.

This year, we’re going virtual! We are hoping that this shift in format allows new presenters and audiences to access and contribute to the conversations in exciting ways.

We invite proposals in a number of creative formats—think talks, discussions, workshops, etc. If you’re interested in presenting, we are releasing a call for proposals below. We will also be available to help first-timers through the submission process - no prior experience is required! To request support in the submission process, please email us at talkingback@shamelessmag.com. ASL interpretation and live captioning will be available during the submission process upon request, and will be available for presenters and attendees during the conference.

CONFERENCE THEMES

The conference will be divided into four main tracks for sessions:

Track 1: Advancing, expanding, critiquing and defining feminism through media
How can we advance, critique, define and re-define feminist politic through media? How are we creating spaces for growth and dialogue? How can we effectively challenge and advance feminist circles that harm our most vulnerable communities (eg., IBPOC, trans and two-spirit people, sex workers, etc.)? How do we remain accountable to a justice-seeking politic for all women and trans people?

Track 2: Building community, forming and nurturing relations through feminist media
What does community accountability look like in feminist media? How can we form, maintain and nourish relationships of care through media creation and consumption? How can we create entry points, open doors to new (real life or virtual) spaces? How can feminist media activite these spaces? How do we move away from a white supremacist perspective of us vs. them and towards a shared responsibility for / commitment to the collective? What is the role of care, compassion, empathy and humanity in this work?

Track 3: Supporting and contributing to social movements through feminist media
How can feminist media contribute in meaningful ways to social movements? How can we advance the shared goals of decolonization, racial justice, abolition, reproductive justice and equity in tangible ways? In what ways is feminist media an access point or bridge for movement-building? How can we sustain and support these movements beyond the news cycle?

Track 4: Feminist forms of media creation
How can we practice feminist in politic in the process of media creation? How can we re-distribute resources, challenge capitalism while surviving within it, centre and honour under- and mis-represented voices? What new forms is feminist media taking, and what ways of working radically reimagine our relationships to production, capitalism, and each other?

CALL FOR CONFERENCE PRESENTERS

Are you interested in presenting a workshop, giving a talk about a cool media project that you’ve been a part of, sharing your super rad knowledge, or assembling a group of people to come up with new and exciting schemes? We are looking for conference presenters!

Please note: All presenters will be paid an honorarium of $120.00.

Sessions are 75 minutes long, and can take on a number of formats, including:
- Presentations or talks
- Panel discussions
- Workshops
- Performances
- Story-telling
- Show-and-tell
- Crowd-sourcing knowledge and wisdom
- Some combination of formats!

Please note: we are also accepting applications from folks who have sessions shorter than 75 minutes—if that’s the case, we can work together to either a) group you with other shorter presenters or b) turn your session into something longer. If you have an idea for a shorter session, just make a note of it in your application and we’ll be in touch!

**HOW TO SUBMIT A SESSION PROPOSAL: DEADLINE EXTENDED to Friday November 6th, 2020, 11:59pm EST **

No experience is required to submit a proposal! If this is your first conference, first time putting together a proposal for something, or first time considering speaking or presenting to a group, we want to hear from you! You can submit a proposal as an individual or as a group.

Talking Back Feminist Media Conference Call for Proposals

The link above will take you to the proposal submission form. The application is divided into five sections:

SECTION 1: Contact information
All the information we need to address you and get in touch, as well as voluntary self-identification so we can do our best to make this conference as diverse as possible.

SECTION 2: Session proposal
Here we have the bulk of the proposal. We will ask you to select a track (Please note: if you have an idea that does not fit into any of the tracks above, you can still apply! We know how hard it can be to fit amazing things into boxes, regardless of how amazing those boxes might be!), name your session, and select a format (or come up with your own!).

Before you fill this out, it would be helpful to work through the following questions:
What key questions, ideas or themes do you want to address?
Eg. “How can we build community through feminist media making?” or, “Ethical fundraising,” or “feminist maker spaces”

How do you want to address these topics?
Eg. “I want to facilitate a workshop where participants will share their experiences of representation in media.”

What do you want attendees to leave with?
Eg. “I want attendees to leave with lessons learned from the case study I presented.”

What is your relationship to these ideas?
Eg. “I have been reading feminist magazines for years.” or, “I have been the lone voice expressing these challenges in my institution.”

Please use the space below to describe your session in more detail

What do you need to make this presentation work?

We will also ask what you need from us to make this session work (special equipment, room needs, etc.).

SECTION 3: Supports
In this section we’ll ask you what support you might need from us to see your session through. Some folks get nervous speaking in front of an audience, others might need help designing an outline. We’re here to help!

SECTION 4: Access needs
In this section, we ask what you’ll need from us and the space to be able to access it. Do you need childcare? ASL Interpretation? Lots of breaks to collect your thoughts? Let us know and we’ll do our best to design a conference that works for everyone!

HELP!

We totally get how overwhelming it can be to submit a proposal, especially for the first time. We’re here to help! If you would like support with filling out this call for proposals, please email talkingback@shamelessmag.com to discuss.

We can arrange to communicate by:
- Email
- Phone
- Instant message (Google chat or WhatsApp)
- Video chat

We can provide the following support:
- Answering questions about the conference, proposal questions or selection process
- Coming up with an alternate format for you to present your proposal (ie. audio or visual)
- Building on an idea you might have to turn it into a proposal
- Maybe more! Just ask!

Whether you are experienced or new, it is fine to write “I’m not sure” as an answer to any question in your proposal. We can work on figuring it out together.

Illustration by Saul Freedman-Lawson

Anyone heard the phrase “Defund the Police” lately? Over the last few months, we’ve been hearing the call to defund the police more and more, especially in the protests following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Louisville. And in Canada, following the police involvement in the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet. But many of us have never heard this phrase before, and have never thought about the police as something that could be ‘defunded’. We might be wondering, what does that even mean? Often, when an idea rapidly gains more attention – like the way that “defunding the police” has become a lot more visible over the last few months – it’s easy to assume that the idea itself is brand new. If we think that the concept of defunding the police was just thought up, we might understandably feel a little wary of it or wonder if there’s a plan for a world without police.

Well, the great news is that the idea of defunding the police is totally not new! Many folx have spent a lot of time thinking about what it might look like. In fact, defunding the police is really only one piece in a decades old (even centuries old) movement to get rid of police and prisons entirely – this movement is called prison abolition. Prison abolition aims to create a world without police, prisons, and surveillance, while also creating lasting alternatives for ensuring justice and safety for everyone .

Now, if the term “abolition” is ringing a bell, then it’s doing its job. Not only does prison abolitionist thinking have a long history, it’s really all about history. Prison and police abolitionists use the term abolition because it makes important connections between prisons, histories of slavery and anti-Blackness, and histories of settler colonialism and Indigenous displacement. Understanding how modern prisons are deeply connected to these histories gives us a much better idea of why racism is so pervasive in policing, and how defunding the police and prison abolition could lead to a more just and equitable system. So, exactly what are these connections, and what do they reveal about our current system of policing and prisons?

Most prominently, the term ‘abolition’ calls to mind the history of slavery – it asks us to think of prison abolition as the unfinished work of abolishing slavery. This connection between the enslavement of black people and our current prison systems reveals a lot about how racism operates in policing. The main idea is that while the specific institutions that police Black people have changed, the ideas behind them have largely remained the same from the slave trade all the way to modern prisons. For instance, modern police disproportionately target Black people because there is a prevalent, racist association between Black folx and crime. This association actually comes from the era of slavery. In Canada in the 17th century, slave owners put ads in local newspapers seeking their ‘fugitive’ slaves – enslaved black people who had run away – and asking for them to be returned if seen. These ads did two things. Firstly, they encouraged the over-surveillance and hyper-suspicion of Black people in public spaces. White folx were constantly assessing if Black people were runaway slaves, and therefore not ‘legally’ free. Secondly, these ads connected Black freedom with criminality – planting the idea that any Black person who wanted autonomy over their own body and their own choices was inherently criminal. These ads told people that Black freedom was dangerous. These slavery-era ideas about Black people and Black freedom persist in modern policing, where Black folx are disproportionally suspected, arrested and imprisoned for perceived criminal activities. Beginning with Black folx being forcefully brought to North America, the logic behind slavery told us that Black folx needed to be watched, controlled, and shackled – and modern policing exhibits those exact same racist ideas.

This is why Canadian poet and prison abolitionist El Jones has called modern prisons “slavery’s afterlife” – but she also calls prisons “the new residential schools”. This is because another history that is important to understanding prison abolition is the history of settler colonialism. Settlercolonialism refers to the ongoing process of Europeans arriving in North America and stealing the land from Indigenous peoples while also attempting to completely eliminate Indigenous folx through genocide. This process views Indigenous peoples as ‘in the way’ of European settlers and their exploitation of the land, and it continues to dispossess Indigenous peoples to this day. When Europeans started forcefully confining Indigenous folx on reserves and in the notoriously abusive residential schools, this was all a part of settler colonial thinking that was trying to get Indigenous folx ‘out of the way’. In fact, when the RCMP was founded they played a really important role in confining Indigenous folx to these small pieces of land – and yes, those are the same RCMP that we have today.

In Canada, Indigenous folx are arrested and incarcerated at even higher rates than Black folx. Confining Indigenous folx to prisons is an extension of residential schools and reserves. The logic of settler-colonialism in modern prisons becomes even more clear when we look at how Indigenous land defenders are criminalized. When Indigenous folx are arrested for defending their land – like we saw with Land Defenders of the Wet’suwet’en territory or the Six Nations Land Defenders of 1492 Land Back Lane earlier this year – the underlying idea is still that Indigenous ownership of land is ‘in the way’, and that Indigenous folx need to be arrested and confined so that their land can be more easily exploited.

Alright, so all of this history is invoked when we use the term “prison abolition”, but what is the history of prison abolition itself? Well, back in 2003, political activist, academic and author Angela Davis wrote a book that instigated contemporary conversations about prison abolition, called Are Prisons Obsolete? This book reminded readers that modern prisons and police have not always existed, and so they are not inherently necessary, and certainly not impossible to get rid of. It also began explicitly asking the question, what might a world without prisons look like?

Angela Davis also made it clear that Prison Abolition is not the same as prison reform. While reforms might be necessary and life-saving in some instances, a focus on prison reform is too narrow to really solve the problems of modern police and prisons. In other words, it doesn’t deal with the systems that allow racism to persist in modern policing – like the anti-black ideas and anti-Indigenous ideas we’ve been talking about. Since prison reform doesn’t acknowledge that these problems go way beyond police and prisons, reforms are never really going to solve them. Abolition, on the other hand, is committed to looking at the ways that modern prisons are really just one example of how these issues exist in our world. They emphasize that taking on these issues requires completely changing how we think about justice and safety.

Since then, a lot of folx have been thinking about and advocating for prison abolition. While American scholars and educators like Angela Davis have been instrumental, Canada also has a rich history of important prison and police abolitionist thought. For instance, El Jones is a Canadian poet and prison abolitionist whose work focuses on prison justice and reminds us that while some folx are in chains, none of us are truly free. She highlights the voices of prisoners themselves, both in her writing for the Halifax Examiner and in her radio show Black Power Hour. Black, feminist writer and educator Robyn Maynard has also contributed to prison abolitionist thought in Canada with her book Policing Black Lives, a comprehensive history of state violence against Black folx in Canada. Her book importantly reminds us that anti-black policing in Canada has always been prevalent – dispelling the myth of Canada as a ‘safe haven’ for Black folx. Events like the Prisoner Justice Film Festival – co-founded by prison abolitionists Syrus Marcus Ware and Giselle Dias – have also been taking place in Toronto and London since the early 2000s, highlighting the injustices towards Indigenous and Black folx within the Canadian prison system.

All this history of folx thinking about prison and police abolition means that there are a lot of really concrete ideas about how we might get there and what it might look like! Defunding the police is only the first step in a process of gradually eliminating police and prisons altogether, building up a system that emphasizes justice and reparations over revenge and punishment, and prioritizing community problem solving. Check out 8toabolition.com for a really clear and concise idea of what the rest of those steps could look like!

Knowing this history of police and prison abolition reminds us that while some people might want us to believe that defunding the police is a new ‘trend’, it really has a long history. It addresses the racist ideas that enslaved Black folx and colonized Indigenous land, and shows us how these ideas persist in our modern prisons and police. Most importantly, this kind of knowledge is a necessary part of starting to support movements to defunding the police! A clearer understanding of the history behind prison abolition makes us better able to advocate for it. And this has only been the smallest introduction! There is so much out there to read about prison abolition and defunding the police. Below, you can find some recommended reading that can help give you an idea of where to start!

Recommended Reading:

• Abolitionist Future’s Reading List [https://abolitionistfutures.com/full-reading-list]
• Policing Black Lives, by Robyn Maynard
• Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Davis
• The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
• Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada, edited by Rodney Diverlus, Sandy Hudson, and Syrus Marcus Ware
• “What The Prison-Abolition Movement Wants”, by Kim Kelly https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-prison-abolition-movement
• “A Condensed History of Canada’s Colonial Cops” by M. Gouldhawke https://thenewinquiry.com/a-condensed-history-of-canadas-colonial-cops/
• 8toAbolition - https://www.8toabolition.com/

About the author: Maighdlin Mahoney (she/her) is a writer with a background in theatre creation, production, and performance. As a writer, her interest is in writing non-fiction and fiction that interrogate the stories we tell about our pasts and ourselves, as well as the effect that these stories have on how we understand our world and one another. She was a co-producer, co-creator, and actor in Nasty, a feminist exploration of history, which appeared in the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival and the 2018 Feminist Fuck It Fest. She is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto, where she received an Honours Bachelor Degree with a double major in English Literature and History.

Illustration: Saul Freedman-Lawson

It’s time to get excited! Shameless is thrilled to announce we will host the our second annual Talking Back Feminist Media Conference online this fall. Save the date! This virtual conference will be held on November 21st and 22nd. This conference is funded by the Toronto Arts Council.

Like all things Shameless, and building on what we created together last year, it’s important to us that this conference is community-centred, accessible, radical, and fun; and that’s where we need your help. Shameless is currently looking for volunteer steering committee members to help us envision and bring to life the most exciting and wonderful (virtual) gathering we can. No experience necessary! Read below for more info:

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

Theme
The conference theme this year is Feminist Media as Social Justice. Last year, we had so many exciting proposals that spoke to the radical potential of feminist media as a form of activism, and the great garbage fire of 2020 has really driven home the importance of committing (or re-committing) to transformative social change. We are excited to bring together intergenerational perspectives that speak to and imagine the ways feminist media can advance racial justice, abolition, equity, and care; the ways it can build new worlds. We will ask and try to answer questions around the role of media, the meaning(s) of justice and the future(s) we want to see.

Format
Of course, we can’t be together in-person this year, so we are going virtual! We are hoping that this shift in format allows new audiences to access and contribute to the conversations in exciting ways. Presenters, exhibitors, and vendors will be invited to submit proposals (call for proposals coming soon!) in a number of creative formats. The specific prompts will be confirmed by the steering committee (so, stay tuned!). However, the conference will definitely include: an art exhibition, an online marketplace, and open-format sessions conducted via Zoom - think talks, discussions, workshops, etc. If you’re interested in presenting, we will be releasing a call for proposals. We will also be available to help first-timers through the submission process - no prior experience is required!

Join our steering committee!
We are seeking volunteers from across Canada to join our steering committee. This committee will decide on the specific themes of each track of the conference, help draft the call for proposals, and select presenters. Committee members are asked to attend two online meetings, as well as be available to review presenter applications in-between. Members will require access to the internet in order to review applications and attend meetings.

We want this committee to represent folks of a variety of identities, backgrounds, and experiences. All ages (including youth!) are welcome, and we strongly encourage applications from folks who are historically under or mis-represented by mainstream (and feminist) media; BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) women, trans, and non-binary people, queer and gender non-conforming folks, d/Deaf and/or Disabled folks, etc.

While this is a volunteer position (as all positions as Shameless are! If you happen to be a moneyed person who would like to help us change that, click here for info on supporting our work!), we can offer the following in exchange for your time and expertise:

• Free admission for you and a guest to the 2020 Talking Back Feminist Media Conference
• A one-year subscription to Shameless magazine
• An honorarium of $120 CAD
• Reference contact

To apply to be on the steering committee, please fill out this form on or before September 18, 2020. If you have any questions about the application or the committee, please contact us at talkingback@shamelessmag.com.

Stay tuned for our callout for proposals!
We will be releasing a call for proposals at the end of September! If you’re interested in joining a special conference mailing list so the call comes to your inbox, click here. Remember there will be lots of ways of presenting—submitting artwork for an exhibition, sharing your rad feminist wares in our virtual arts marketplace, or planning a session by yourself or with others! We will also be available to support with the application process if you’re new to conferences, so don’t let that hold you back!

Photo from The Gender Spectrum Collection by Broadly

Let’s be honest: we are all currently stressed. Pandemic-wise, statistics tell us that most of us know at least one person who is immunocompromised, and whose health and wellbeing we are trying to protect. Combined with the systemic oppression-related stress that comes with being queer, trans and/or a person of colour, the stress of an actual pandemic is only the tip of the stress iceberg for many of us – even as our communities are disproportionately affected by the virus. While the ongoing attacks on Black and brown communities (as most recently seen in the US’s struggle against police brutality) are unfortunately nothing new, they exacerbate all pandemic-related stress, which has been a thing for over five months now.

Prolonged stress tends to wreak havoc on our physical and emotional health, which means that many of us have been finding new ways to cope/self-soothe during quarantine, even as we figured out what to do next. One of the most common coping methods that we see is binge-watching (streaming services experienced a 50% increase in consumption throughout the U.S and Canada since March of this year), combined with lots of baking delicious foods, specifically cookies and bread, and sharing recipes and process pics on social media (especially Instagram). Interestingly (if predictably), as soon as quarantines and lockdowns were instated, Instagram was also flooded with workout videos, many of which were some form of at-home yoga. A wide range of yogis, from popular influencers to local yoga teachers, persistently argued for the importance of keeping or creating a yoga practice to handle stress levels during quarantine. Many of these teachers, however, also started to market from a weight loss perspective, and sport slogans like “lose the quarantine 15.” This, combined with the indirect messaging of what a yoga body “should” look like (online yoga accounts often show just one type of body: thin, white, and clad in expensive yoga wear), very quickly turned into a conversation about how yoga could make you into a superhero mermaid with a six-pack.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all about using your privilege to support the economy and services like yoga, especially when it is a local studio or teacher in your area. And when you weed out everything problematic about indirectly shaming someone for gaining weight during a pandemic, the truth is that yoga can be pretty good for you during quarantine. An integrated, self-paced yoga practice can help support human health in a variety of ways, from joint health to respiratory function. It can also be great for mental and emotional health, as it has been found to help with PTSD and processing grief, among other benefits. This is why, when I looked through the interwebs a few weeks ago, I have to say, I was horrified.

Detox talk. Was. Everywhere.

I mean, everywhere. Juice cleanses, High-Intensity-Interval-Training-yoga fusion routines sporting slogans like “quarantine should not be an excuse…”

So, what is detox talk? It’s a form of body shaming that Nityda Gessel defines as the direct or indirect messaging that your body is toxic, and needs to be cleansed, usually through vigorous yoga practice, until it is brought to an acceptable standard of cleanliness. This kind of messaging has proven incredibly profitable for lifestyle brands since the 90s, so it is no surprise that the yoga industry has gone for a similar marketing approach.

The worst part of seeing detox talk during a pandemic, in my opinion, is the lack of accurate representation and validation of the changes that people’s bodies are undergoing due to prolonged stress. This pandemic has been traumatic for many, and, also for many, it has been re-traumatizing. Meaning that pretty much anyone who grew up feeling trapped, powerless, or helpless has found themselves triggered by the experience of being quarantined. For this reason, people have both gained and lost weight from the emotional stress. However, most of the conversations around “health” during quarantine focus on weight loss, something that those who have lost weight due to anxiety definitely do not need. Let’s call the general conversation surrounding losing the “quarantine 15” what it is: blatantly fat-phobic and unnecessary. What we should be looking at instead is the fact that inactivity has increased since shelter-in-place orders were instated. While experts agree that creating some kind of exercise routine while in quarantine is great for preventing contagion, we don’t seem to culturally have a grasp on why people have been more sedentary while in quarantine. According to trauma specialist Nityda Gessel, there is a reason why people who are having a hard time emotionally often don’t want to exercise: trauma is stored in the body, and movement and breathwork can often be very triggering. To someone who is having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, or simply can’t afford to pay for yoga classes, the message that so many of these virtual yoga classes actually send sounds less like “you can do it” and more like “you are unacceptable the way you are, and will continue to be so until you buck up, cleanse yourself, and become your ‘best version.’”

Fun fact: detox talk is inherently incompatible with authentic yoga when we look at its history. The earliest and oldest cousins of yoga can actually be traced back long before the Indus River Valley civilization, to the Dravidian people of Ethiopia, and the practice had a highly spiritual undertone, even within its physical component. After migrating from Ethiopia and helping to co-found the Indus River Valley civilization, the Dravidians brought with them their knowledge of Kemetic yoga (a form of yogic philosophy and practice from Kemet, or ancient Egypt), which did not really exclude any gender or body type, and which was often a part of religious ceremony. This tradition was intermixed with some of the other cultures and spiritual philosophies in the Indus River Valley Civilization, and, following the Aryan (Central Asian) invasion, eventually evolved into a more classist version of itself within the Indian caste system. What followed is a long and complicated history, especially when we fast forward to the British invasion of India, which gave way to a lot of the cultural appropriation that we see today in the yoga industry. Once yoga was brought to the West by Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, teachers from all over the world saw its fitness potential and quickly began to capitalize off of its physical benefits without necessarily understanding the history or potential depth of the practice.

Because of this, a lot of the yoga that we do in the West is not actually yoga. It is a colonial-based, culturally appropriative version of a complex philosophy that was already dealing with the societal effects of classism, power, and privilege. For this reason, we have to be extra careful when we choose a yoga teacher, especially if we are trying to use yoga as a tool for mental health.

One of the most quoted yogic texts (ironically, often quoted in support of detox talk) defines yoga as the stilling or breaking free of the patterns of the mind. And when you look at the collective mind, this looks like breaking free from cultural belief patterns (like body shaming) that harm us and our fellow humans. So how can we build a self-caring yoga practice that can truly help us during quarantine? Here are some tips:

1. Create a “my needs” list: Many of us struggle with feeling like we deserve what we need. Yoga is actually a great way to start questioning some of the thoughts and feelings that go on in the mind and body, and to potentially invite new perspectives in. It is super important to do this without getting into denial or suppression-mode. So write out what you actually want and need out of a yoga practice! Some examples can include: an anti-racist teacher, an accessible price range, body-positive/inclusive language, an ability-inclusive class… Get to know what you need, then start looking.

2. Acquaint yourself with your body and hormonal cycle: One of the things that detox talk does is oversimplify bodily functions to make it sound as easy as clean vs. dirty. For this reason, one of the best things you can do when choosing a class is to research how your body and its amazingly diverse set of ecosystems actually work, especially on a hormonal level. Get several perspectives on hormonal and menstrual health, digestive function, what micronutrients you need (it’s not just about the macros!) and your body’s microbiome. Research this specifically for your biology and hormonal needs (cis women have different micronutrient needs than cis men, as do trans women and men, and many studies are done evaluating only cis gender men). See how the science out there resonates with the way your body fluctuates. The more you do this, the easier it will be to build a practice that is actually good for you.

3. Create your safe space: This ranges from what you wear to do yoga, to what you want your space to smell like. You don’t need fancy yoga wear or even a yoga mat to do yoga. Put on clothes that you feel comfortable in, play some music, spray a towel or rug with a body spray you like, or light some incense. Get comfortable in your mind as well. Set an intention and remind yourself that it may shift as you practice. Create the circumstances around you that make you feel excited, supported, and safe.

4. Research the emotional aspect of yoga: I highly recommend looking up the Trauma Conscious Yoga Institute. Usually teachers who care about yoga for social justice and healing tend to also value an intersectional approach to asana practice that is gender inclusive, and body positive. Find studios and Instagram pages that feature yoga teachers with a wide range of bodies. Some of my favourites are @mynameisjessamyn, @ajareeser and @buddha_body_yoga. Practice writing to yoga studios and asking questions about inclusivity and emotional safety in their classes – you might inspire a studio to make a much needed change.

5. Practice listening: While a lot of yoga schools like to talk about how important silencing the mind can be, it is also important that you don’t build a practice that you eventually equate to silencing yourself. This means: pay attention to your thoughts and how you feel about them. Then decide what you want to do with your thoughts. You want to build a practice that works with you, not against you.

6. Create community: Last but not least, explore the potential that yoga can have for building community! This can mean doing a virtual yoga sesh with friends and/or family, or looking up teachers that you resonate with and recommending their content to people you know. Explore your leadership potential and share your findings with the world. It’s waiting for you!

About the Author: Victoria Sagardía Calderón (she/her/hers) is a writer, yoga instructor and trauma specialist from Puerto Rico. Her work focuses on decolonizing self care and conversations about bodies, community, and mental health. She is also a professional dancer and cat mom.

Image Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/epBIrtdg2Hk

COVID-19 has the world turned upside down. Grocery store workers have become as essential as those in the healthcare industry, and, like healthcare workers, they risk their health every time they’re on the job.

According to Prime Minister Trudeau, those essential employees should be properly compensated. Trudeau said in a statement, “If you are risking your health to keep this country moving and you are making minimum wage, you deserve a raise.” Workers in certain essential industries, including grocery store workers and cleaners, were eligible for a wage top-up provided by the government, Trudeau said.

No plans to make these top-ups permanent were announced when Trudeau let the country know that the individual provinces would be handling the details of the additions in wages. Because the wage top-ups — and the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) — are likely transitory, and paid work is shutting down at a rate never before seen, minimum wage workers are banding together with their families and friends to share resources and support each other through the pandemic.

Ironically, as social isolation is encouraged for the sake of public health, it is small, united groups of people that may ultimately thrive. We are seeing the emergence of mutual aid funds and networks in response to the coronavirus and, alongside them, the possibility that we could return to more widespread intergenerational and communal living in order to benefit both the greater good and the economy.

Although it’s reminiscent of new age philosophies, the concept of mutual aid is rooted in organization theory, a branch of sociology. At its core, mutual aid benefits everyone involved. Groups of people survive and thrive by working together in a reciprocal relationship. Within mutual aid groups, some individuals provide monetary support while others perform needed services like food preparation or manual labor. Everyone has a part to play.

Social activist groups, such as the multiple indigenous groups that populate Canada, have shifted their efforts to providing aid to their communities. Mutual aid groups in every province, like Halifax Community Care in Nova Scotia and Toronto Community Response in Ontario, provide food, utility funds, gas, and more to those in need. These types of resources are especially crucial for marginalized populations, including minorities and single parents — the same populations are also disproportionately vulnerable to COVID-19.

Mutual aid groups can even help to reduce the spread of coronavirus. It’s imperative that the most vulnerable to the virus, like those who are immunocompromised, continue to remain as isolated as possible to both protect their own health and to help keep the number of cases low. This is where mutual aid volunteers can come in — these healthy volunteers can provide groceries, prescriptions, and other necessary supplies to house-bound citizens and other vulnerable populations.

For those earning minimum wage, making ends meet is a challenge in the best of times. During a global pandemic, the task may seem impossible. While rent relief is being offered across provinces, mutual aid can come to the rescue by providing necessities like groceries, toiletries, and medications so that renters and homeowners don’t have to choose between paying rent or the mortgage, and meeting their basic needs.

As 2020 plods on, COVID-19 will likely continue to be the common thread uniting minimum wage workers, the self-employed, single mothers, and other marginalized groups. The virus may ultimately unite humanity, even as social distancing continues to keep us a safe physical distance apart.

About the Author: Ainsley Lawrence is a freelance writer that lives in the Northwest region of the United States. She has a particular interest in covering topics related to good health, balanced life, and better living through technology. When not writing, her free time is spent reading and researching to learn more about her cultural and environmental surroundings. Find her on Twitter.