I just joined the Shameless blogging team and wanted to introduce myself briefly before I start posting.

I’m a freelance journalist living in Toronto. I moved here this January from Edinburgh, Scotland (the only place on Earth where the weather is worse than in Canada), where I grew up. Since I got here, I’ve been writing for Xtra, a biweekly queer magazine, and blogging for Torontoist.

I wish Shameless had been around when I was a teenager, and I am extremely excited to be a part of it.

“Absolutely I am!”

In my years as a community-radio DJ, I’ve received many a promotional CD for a female artist with that most backhanded of compliments in its promo material: “Not your usual female singer-songwriter”. Okay, I take most music journalism about as seriously as I take Stephen Colbert’s presidential campaign, but this is annoying for so many reasons. What is “your usual female singer-songwriter”, and what’s so bad about that? Did Joni Mitchell really traumatize so many children of baby-boomers that we can no longer conceive of the (extremely broad!) category of female singer-songwriters as anything but derivative and banal? Humph. (Not that I think Joni is derivate and banal. But admittedly she did spawn a legion of copycats who occasionally make me want to poke my ears out.)

Okay. Now that I have that off my chest, here’s my recommendation for this week: Finders Keepers has released a compilation of female singer-songwriters called Bearded Ladies that is anything but banal, gooey, or involving songs about menstruation. What’s nice about this comp is that it seems to have no driving theme other than the unusual and the awesome - the songs date from the 1970s to last year, and the artists are from the USA, France, Turkey, and elsewhere. All the songs could be roughly categorized as folk(ish), but they all decidedly push the boundaries of what can be done with a guitar and a single voice. For instance, Peachtree, the contribution from Lispector (which you can listen to on the Finders Keepers site) is from 2007 but could have come from decades ago, with its 4-track warmth and meandering style.

Other contributors include Turkish protest singer Selda, Wendy & Bonnie, Speck Mountain, and the indescribable Brigitte Fontaine. In fact, I’m not even going to try to describe her. Just watch the video below the cut. Laurie Anderson, eat your heart out.
(more inside…)

Yesterday marked the end of the first National Reproductive Justice Week in the United States.

Reproductive justice is not a term we use too often here in Canada, but on my travels to the U.S. I have learned about it and am trying to bring that school of thought over here since I truly believe it speaks more to what’s realistically going on in the actual world of reproductive rights. It will enhance the pro-choice movement, and not only leave it for the select few who feel like they can join or has anything to do with them.

The pro-choice, like many “feminist” movements in the Western world, has had its fair share of white, colonial influence and over-representation. It’s more than time to addres, include, and advocate for our bodily rights and the way we understand them across diverse social, economic, racial, and sexual backgrounds.

So what is reproductive justice you say? Take a look at the video here:

What does reproductive justice mean to you?

Every so often, we reach out to Shameless Blog readers for support. As you know, we’re a small grassroots volunteer organization that relies entirely on reader support. Every little bit helps - Did you know that if every person who reads this blog in a single day gave us just one dollar we’d be able to afford to mail a new issue of the mag out to all of our subscribers? One dollar from every reader means one third of our printing costs would be covered. One dollar also means we can do our best to pay our fantastic writers a fair wage for their work.

If you’ve got a dollar to spare, it would certainly help us keep our fresh alternative to typical teen magazines going.

Click this convenient Paypal button and support us today!

Or “you can’t get ye flask”.

I’m in the middle of moving, so while I box my worldly possessions, I’m putting up some excerpts from Randy Smith’s column in the May 2008 issue of Edge Magazine.

It’s an excellent article, and if it wasn’t a bit too long (and a bit too legally dodgey) I’d post it here wholesale. It’s a then-and-now analysis on the dominant paradigms of video game design (and, y’know, life).

Randy makes his comparisons to Ultima V, but I kept thinking of hours spent playing King’s Quest, and its unguided, open-ended world mantra of “take anything that isn’t nailed down”. (As well as the many unforeseeable consequences. Oh god the consequences… “People who play King’s Quest should expect their characters to die rather frequently”).

It’s just one example of some damn interesting conversations happening around what’s going on in videogames, who’s playing them, and where they’re going. And that’s not even counting the conversations happening in my house.

---

From Randy Smith’s “The Tyranny of Fun, and of Lord Blackthorn”, Edge Magazine, May 2008.

---

“Am I the only one who gets really worked up about the fact that choice and consequence are out of vogue?
…
Ultima V had a 50-page manual that didn’t teach you how to play the game. It afforded crucial tips like “Britannia has undergone a great transformation from totalitarian monarchy to representative democracy,” and “the newly risen moon, Trammel, is in its Gibbous Waxing phase,” and “slimes carry no booty”. But, after playing through the introduction, there you were holding a dagger and a cloth map with a teeming, jester-infested world sprawled out unhelpfully before you. Who would point you to glorious victory and amassment of booty? How would you make progress? Progress on what? The petty tyrant Lord Blackthorn, who hated freedom, advertised no vulnerabilities.
(more inside…)

This week Torontoist is running a three-part feature on female Firefighters, by Cate Simpson:

…Torontoist has been talking to Toronto Firefighters Julie Petruzzellis and Stacey Hannah about what it’s like to be a woman in a dangerous and demanding occupation—one where they are outnumbered 20-to-1 by men.

The piece is worth a look for John Beebe’s photos alone, but it’s also interesting to hear women in such a male dominated field speak about what drew them to it and why they enjoy it so much.

I’m a big fan of documentaries, and North America’s largest documentary film festival Hot Docs is currently in Toronto until April 27th serving up an excellent roster of real-life movie genres.

So I thought I’d give you my take on two films so far that have rocked me to the core:

Club Native and Umiaq (Skin Boat)

Have you seen any Hot Docs this year?

(more inside…)

Now I know many of you have heard of the fantabulous Miss_G Project for Equity in Education and I was fortunate enough to take part in The Voices Behind the Stats: Students Talk About Safety and Equity in Education last Friday at the always cool and supportive YWCA in Toronto.

It was a forum welcoming the participation of students in Ontario to talk to the Minister of Education, the Honourable Kathleen Wynne, about their perspectives on safety and equity in education and share their ideas for improvement.

Students came together from all across the Greater Toronto Area, London, Ingersoll, and many places in between with one message:
STOP DISCRIMINATION NOW!

They WOW’d everyone with their boundless energy, incredible strength, and sheer determination to end all forms of oppression. They all spoke with such passion and eloquence to the Minister with their many, many solutions to advance young women’s rights for the betterment of society!

I am completely inspired and was moved to tears by these amazing young women. THESE are the experts we need to be listening to for positive change to be effected in schools across the country.

And how awesome is it that the Miss_G Project exists in the first place to make stuff like this happen?!!

The Ministry of Education had better watch out for these powerful young feminists who are ready to take on whatever injustice comes their way and will not take NO for an answer.

You GO GIRLS!!!

(oh and if you are a FACEBOOK user, show them some love on their space!)

The whole feminist crew on Friday!