Eliminate Oppression with Oppression!

Today the The Conseil du statut de la femme( "is a government consultation and study council that, since 1973, has devoted itself to promoting and defending the rights and interests of women in Québec" ) has decided to call:

on the Quebec government to ban what it calls visible religious symbols. While a crucifix or a Star of David on a necklace would be acceptable, council president Christiane Pelchat said, public employees should not be permitted to wear such overt symbols as the hijab, a head covering worn by Muslim women, or the yarmulke, a skullcap worn by Jewish men.

Yeah, uh sorry, you can't eliminate oppression by oppressing people..

Much of the article pissed me right off... I don't even know what to say!? hypocritical bullshit.

Get Pretty or Get Dead.

"No Surgery is Trivial" an article published in the Toronto Star yesterday talks about the tragic death of a Toronto women who passed away last week after having liposuction in New York by a general practitioner, a family doctor....

Estimates of risk vary, but researchers surveying board-certified plastic surgeons in the United States calculated a mortality rate of 20 deaths per 100,000 liposuction cases. That is higher than the U.S. death rate from motor vehicle crashes. Because the survey covered only certified specialists, the actual death rate could well be higher.

yeah, uh scary. We all know some people will do anything to have the right look, but man....

Liposuction is of special concern. Any procedure with the potential to kill an otherwise healthy person must be taken more seriously.

I absolutely agree. Although anyone who knows me understands that I see plastic surgery as a tool to promote fascism. I think plastic surgery was originally intended to reconstruct body parts damaged in accidents or fires, not to serve as tool to promote some otherwise unattainable standard of beauty. It's almost as if the media is really a bunch of little Hitlers out there running around telling you to get purdy or get off the face of the earth. With your life hanging in the balance of a procedure that will benefit your health in now way after, what are they really telling us? Get purdy or get dead.

Toronto Strippers Taking a Stand.

I meant to blog on this yesterday.

My opinion is, let em dance. By not allowing immigrant women to work in strip clubs your not stopping exploitation or making a dent in the sex trade industry. It's that whole thing all over again. Limiting the rights of women are not going to stop horrible things from happening to them. Can we please address the real issue!? Why not place heavier surveillance in the strip clubs to monitor possible human trafficking, and drugs? Honestly, stripping has been around forever. It's not gonna go away (nor does it have to) and these women should be able to work in these clubs just like Canadian women, if they so choose. I'm be a lot more worried about regulating the clubs than stripping strippers of their rights.

Quebec Mennonite Parents Fear Losing Their Children to Child Services.

Mennonites, Canada's Amish well, not really.

A Mennonite group consisting of about 15 families are forced to relocate because of what they say is a local intolerance of their religion. Child services was threatening to take away children Mennonite children from their homes because the children were not attending government approve schools.

For the school to be legal, the teacher would have to be certified and Quebec's official curriculum would have be taught.

"To do that, we would have to send teachers to schools we don't want to send our children to," Mr. Goossen said.

Community members disapprove of other schools because "we don't agree with the emphasis

on evolution, which we consider false; we don't like the morality standards; and we don't like the acceptance of alternative lifestyles," he said.

Okay, I am not very tolerant of religious beliefs when they are imposed on myself or others. But I feel a little bad for these people even tho they don't want to teach evolution, and think homosexuality is a sin. However, I only feel bad that they are being threatened. But I do believe their children have a right to a proper education (not that any of East Coasters got a proper education. jk.) I know Mennonites from back home who went to school with everyone else. I would assume that their parents taught them that evolution was not part of their religion. One can still learn evolution and reject it (although it's pretty damn hard cause evolution is god damn fact, but that's what they're scared of right)

Obviously, I don't agree raising your children in a censored environment. Which is very much what some of the more extreme Mennonite groups do. Limiting knowledge is just dangerous. Breeding ignorance is dangerous, but that's how religions like these work. Control.

But this is a more extreme group.One of my friends grew up as a Mennonite. She still goes to church but she doesn't follow the more strict teachings, such as the banning of technology.

It's hard, because when religion is involved, you don't want to step on any ones toes. But religions that cause harm have been shut down. So does the limiting of education inflict harm? I would say yes. But taking children away from families..No. There must be some compromise here? Sadly, I don't have an answer. It would be nice if they just sent their kids to school... you know to at least learn tolerance.

Aggressive Panhandlers slay man in Toronto.

Crack Heads !

Well I can't help but think the particular people who took part in the slaying were actually 21 year old x-run-away kids.

I'm deeply disturbed at how bad Ontario cities have it right now in regards to the homeless population. It's happened now that crack is so cheap (less than $3 a rock) that more and more of the homeless population are addicted. I live off the main drag in ottawa and am asked for change every two blocks at least. All of the panhandlers I encounter are either high or drunk. When is Ontario going to wake up and do something about this? When are they going to fix the system?obviously these people weren't always like this.What cracks did they slip though? It's so sad. Ottawa is such a beautiful city, we don't want hostile streets.

Anti-feminists....

A week ago I was commenting on a feminist blog and this troll came in and started blabbing about us "angry" feminists and how we're so egotistical. So anyway, for the hell of it, i check out his blog which he was also bragging about. His blog which is so cleverly labelled Antimisandry, is of course, just female hating in disguise. The majority of articles are about "false rape reports" and conspiracy theories about feminists. It's screaming about evil women not letting fathers see their kids by using the court system as weapon and all kinds of garbage. I tried to find something credible in there.. I'm trying to give the persecuted penis, the benifit of a doubt but I have to admit it's pretty damn hard after reading a couple of those articles. Posts are typical really, false rape alligations, women killing their children, how young boys are receiving poor education... yaddda yadda.
So owner/author of the site proclaims that his site isn't anti-women, it's anti-feminist... I'm sorry... isn't that basically saying that you don't care about women's rights and equality? soooooo isn't that basically anti-women? I think the articles speak for themself. I'm always shocked by these sites even tho I've seen so many.

oh I've linked this particular thread from the site where a feminist goes on to ask questions about anti-feminism. It's messed.

Dumbo Octopus off the East Coast!

I think I've made a post about the Dumbo Octopus before. They're so awesome. Well they found one off the coast of eastern canada!! awesome eh? It's about time us east coasters got some interesting sea life!! Read about it HERE!

Researchers are saying that they found tropical like life in deep sea off the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Anyway, they found some neat shit! Must have been a real adventure for the people in the submarine.

Women Stabbed With Sword In Dartmouth, NS.

Woman Stabbed With Sword!

This happened in Dartmouth Nova Scotia, just outside of where I grew up!! It's sick. You don't expect to hear stuff like this but domestic violence has been on the rise for quite sometime in NS.

I'm a little annoyed how the headline reads "pregnant women" . I wonder if the event would be so plastered all over the chronicle harold if she weren't pregnant. People get stabbed all the time in the Halifax/Dartmouth area, and you rarely read about it.

Halifax/Dartmouth like any city has its violence. But it feels as though I read more and more articles about domestic violence. Back in 2003 authorities thought they had a plan to prevent femicide. Officers responding to domestic disputes had a 15 point questionaire to give to the female involved about whether she thought her boyfriend/husband/whomever would pose a fatal threat. (kinda stupid if you ask me, who really thinks they're spouse is gonna kill them? and if they did, would they flat out tell you about while wishing to stay in their spouses company? We all know that women of domestic abuse aren't capable of thinking completely logically. Battered women don't leave for psychological reasons)

The better part is that the officers have their 24 count check list they keep to themselves about what they see/hear and all that to determine if the women is at high risk for femicide.. however, I haven't been able to locate any information about how well the program has done since or whether its reduced femicide. After reading the article today, I'm inclined to think there are better things the law enforcement of the city could be doing.

I'm going to further research Nova Scotia's domestic violence protocal. I'll let you know if I find anything useful.

Oh I thought I'd post this useful piece of info I got from an volunteer who works for the Halifax Sexual Assualt Center. It's about how quickly violence escalates when a woman becomes pregnant

Update : SPCA contacts jerks selling adopting puppies on the internet.

I received a letter back from the SPCA (please see post below as reference) It's so sad.. here's what they've said:

Hello,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have telephoned them
and asked them to return the dog to as as per our Adoption agreement;
however, they are refusing.
We could take Legal action; however, this would take money away from
our animals and we are not certain that we can afford this.
We are very upset that people would do this as we had a lot of interest
in this dog and this particular family spent almost an entire afternoon
with the dog and really, really felt that it was perfect for their
family.
This is a very sad situation.

I'm so mad, I wanna call these people and harrass them for being such deplorable human beings. Although I did notice today that they have deleted the add from the Kijiji site. I suspect they are using another internet classified. I am on a missing to track them down.

Assholes adopting dogs from the SPCA and then selling them for big bucks online!!!

Today I saw something really dispictable.Here!

Read the tiny description. A person claims that they are selling their Goldendoodle dog that they just adopted from the SPCA in Alymer. The SPCA screens their adoptees really rigourously and some asshole got this god last week, paid about 350 for it and is selling it online now for 950$! Disgusting!

So what did I do? of course I sent the add to Alymer SPCA. The add that includes these peoples telephone number and email address.

Feminism on PunkOttawa

I decided to post this thread just out of general interest for the thread I started on Punk Ottawa. I was interested to know if there were any lurking feminists and I found a bunch! There are also some interesting points made which I thought people may want to read.