Our First Day at SACHA

As two midwifery students coming into SACHA for placement, we were thrilled to take part in the Take Back the Night preparations;  part of that included going to CHCH 11 to watch Lenore the director at SACHA speak on “Square Off” to inform the community about this historic night.

We were expecting Lenore to inform the community about what Take Back the Night is all about, but instead, she was left defending women’s right to create a women-identified only space. From our perspective, Lenore was unfairly cornered by two news anchors and a columnist from Ottawa. The part that really surprised me was that as media, you would expect CHCH 11 to have a responsibility to bring up why this event exists, what it was for and to help promote this cause to the community –  allowing more people to be aware and get involved.

For those of us that love charts…and oppose victim-blaming!

Awesome Pie Chart Postcard from Rape Crisis Scotland.

Challenging the myth that “she was asking for it”: Rape Crisis Scotland’s Public Awareness Campaign

Check out this excellent PSA put out by Rape Crisis Scotland as part of their Not Ever Campaign, which points to the absolute ludicrousness of the claim that women are ever “asking to be raped” based on what they wear, how they act, where they go, or whether they’ve been partying. The message here is powerful: victim-blaming and slut-shaming are unequivocally wrong.There is no excuse for rape (or any sexual violence). Not Ever!

Cara over at The Curvature has some interesting stuff to say about the campaign.

–jen

What are Triggers? How Can We Deal?

Last week, my co-TBTN blog editor Erin and I sat down to work through the plan for Trigger Warnings here on the blog.

As we worked through this, I found myself comfortably able to admit — Trigger Warnings and talk of triggers? Kind of triggering for me sometimes.

Today, I sat down with an enormous stack of resources from an amazing ‘zine called A World Without Sexual Assault. There in, I found a section about triggers. The first time I scanned through the package, I attempted to read more. Almost instantly, I got through four paragraphs without reading a word. I’d drifted off into memories of super unhappy past experiences.

Today, I tried again. I have coffee, Fugazi, and strong friends around.

TBTN 2010 in Women’s Press

Have you checked out the Immigrant Women’s Centre’s newspaper The Women’s Press?

The goal of this newspaper is to create a forum for women in Hamilton – both immigrant and Canadian-born – to discuss issues important to them.

From http://www.stjosephwomen.on.ca/index.php?page=womeninfocusourstories

There is some awesome stuff that is in every issue like Legal Questions and Answers, What Women are Talking About, and book and movie reviews.

Last September SACHA partnered with the Immigrant Women’s Centre to put out a TBTN special issue of The Women’s Press.  There’s lots of great articles about why folks march at TBTN, how to be a great male ally, one survivor’s experience, and an overview of TBTN in Hamilton.

You can read the September 2010 issue of The Women’s Press here: http://stjosephwomen.on.ca//cmfiles/Women%20Press%20Issue%207.pdf

Being a Male Ally: How We Can Help

Taylor blogs at No Greater Male Supporter where you could find him musing on victim blaming, sexism, allyship and sometimes hockey.  Taylor is generously guest blogging for TBTN Hamilton.

As prefaced in my last post, here are some ways male allies can help:

We can be okay with just being there in solidarity. We don’t always have to speak. Our presence alone can speak volumes, whether it’s at a rally or a bookclub.

We can invest energy in learning about all oppressed groups, not just our female loved ones who face oppression. If we read up on homophobia, racism, ableism, ageism, transphobia, et cetera, we’ll have a much broader spectrum through which we view how oppression works and how it can be counteracted. “Whistling Vivaldi” by Claude Steele is a great example of a book that encourages such a perspective.  Challenge yourself to be a Feminist all the time, not just when you’re around your girlfriend.

Being a Male Ally: My Experience of SlutWalk and Take Back The Night

Even though our wonderful TBTN blog has only been around for two months we’re already starting to do grown-up blog stuff like having a guest blogger!

Taylor blogs at No Greater Male Supporter where you could find him musing on victim blaming, sexism, allyship and sometimes hockey.

What a pleasure to be writing for SACHA and Hamilton’s Take Back The Night this September!

I first learned about Take Back the Night during the weeks leading up to Vancouver’s SlutWalk a couple months ago.  I was (and still am) very excited about the SlutWalk movement, but I originally did have two misgivings about it. One was the “mesh panty hose” image of the event, which I felt to be less an effective satire of the word, “Slut”, and more of a distraction of the event’s message, which is that, contrary to the beliefs of a certain Toronto Police Officer, women are sexually assaulted irrespective of whether they wear said mesh panty hose.  If the vast majority of sexual assault happens in a trusting relationship, and given that clothing does not contribute to assault, why make the focus of the movement so attached to clothing…

Then of course the event happened and all of a dozen or so out of the thousand plus there actually dressed ‘sluttily’ (whatever the definition of the word may be to you). I’d been had. The “Look at us high fiving in our mesh stockings” message that SlutWalk was supposedly all about was more a function of reactions from outside the movement, and anyone who actually listened to Katie Raso, Vancouver SlutWalk’s organizer, would know the message of SlutWalk was to “get out of a culture that says hey women don’t get raped and [become] a culture that says hey men, don’t rape women.”

Teen Dating Violence in Hamilton

When surveyed on their experiences of dating violence…

• … 57% off males and 44% of males said their dating partner stopped them from seeing their friends or doing things they enjoyed.
• … 68% of females and 32% of males said their dating partner threatened to commit suicide if the relationship ended.
• …72% of females and 28% of males said their dating partner put them down or called them names.
• …56% of females and 44% of males said their dating partner blamed them when things went wrong.
• …76% of females and 24% of males said their dating partner told jokes or made nasty remarks about their gender, religion or culture.
• …62% of females and 39% of males said their dating partner pressured them to use alcohol or drugs.
• …74% of females and 27% of males said their dating partner touched them when they didn’t want them to.

Statistics from Hamilton Youth Dating Violence Project, April 2005

Sexist Beer Ads Still Sexist

Did you get a chance to see the Old Milwaukee billboards around Hamilton?  If not don’t worry, they showed the same tired examples of sexism and misogyny.  Fifties style pin up girls lazing about beer cans beside text that declared “Free Girl With Every Can.”

Anita from Feminist Frequency made a great video about this phenomenon – Retro Sexism and Uber Ironic Advertising:

 “Advertisers must believe that the use of irony distances themselves from male chauvinism but that isn’t the case. While we think we are in on the joke, the reality is they aren’t making fun of or pointing out sexism, they’re doing it.”

Old Milwaukee knows what they are doing is sexist.  They pulled stuff like this in the past.  For example the Swedish Bikini Team ads of 1991.

The beer company dropped these ads after protests