The recipients of the 2008 Person’s Case Awards were announced earlier this month. The award honours people who have made “outstanding contributions” to the advancement of Canadian women and is named for the five women who, in 1929, won the right for women to be recognized as persons – The Famous Five.

The list of recipients is impressive but Shari Graydon – a longtime feminist activist and writer – wonders why the youth award was given to a man named Ben Barry for running a modelling agency. Shari has passed on a letter she wrote to the Persons Case Award Committee (see below). In it, she argues that the Person’s Case youth award could have been handed out to one of the hundreds of young women across Canada who struggle to improve women’s lives in meaningful ways.

I agree with Shari. In the face of the continual violence, exploitation, and oppression women in this country face, and considering the tricky tactics the beauty industry uses to sell us things we don’t need, I do not believe that running a for-profit modeling agency should be recognized as making an “outstanding contribution” to women’s lives, and I can think of dozens of young women activists (many of whom frequent this blog) who deserve this award. Maybe Shari’s letter will inspire you to nominate someone next year.

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Apologies for posting this so late, but it’s definitely worth a read in its entirety!

Here we present to you the Manifesto adopted at the Pan-Canadian Young Feminist Gathering Toujours RebELLEs / Waves of Resistance, Montreal, on October 13, 2008. More than 500 young women between the ages of 14 to 35 gathered from every single province and territory to reclaim feminism and try to take it back for what it needs to be so we’re all included.

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let’s keep that party train pumpin’!

It’s been almost four years since The Miss G__ Project for Equity in Education began their crusade to get a Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) course added into the Ontario high school curriculum.

Well baby, hard work and perseverance pay off!

Drum roll please….

During the 2009 winter term the official WGS course will be piloted in high schools across Ontario! Open and College/University credit options are expected to come by the following September.

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In light of the fact that many Americans think it’s totally okay to amend the constitution to repeal or prevent the marriage and family (and human) rights their neighbours, I really needed to revisit Julie Goldman. Do we really need to do this all over again? Really?

Margaret Cho had this to say about Prop 8 passing:

…I am totally disgusted and furious that now there is a ban on gay marriage in California. So my happiness about Obama is tempered by my anger about Prop 8. Still, we cannot give up on the struggle. This is just a reason to fight harder to make gay marriage legal again. We can overturn the ban. We lost this by such a narrow margin. It was only a few votes. We could take it back.

These ‘yes on 8′ idiots really think they have God on their side, but they don’t. Trust me, Jesus is totally bummed right now because He is not registered to vote in California because he is technically dead, although he has everlasting life.

This is just a momentary setback, something that will make our ultimate victory just that much sweeter. And with a new President, someone who will finally listen to us, we can do anything.

Although we haven’t really slept, although we’ve driven 40 plus hours in the last 5 days, and although there is still a lot of work to be done, most definitely including with the Native vote, we won.

Measure 11 failed here in South Dakota, but the real victory I can tell you was won in the trailers, dirt roads, and small communities who came to terms with standing up for change in a place that so often forgets them. Although the opposition is already threatening to bring it back, the efforts we’ve made since 2006 I don’t think will be forgotten and will hopefully keep us safe, especially in places that know only too well what it’s like to have the rest of your rights and freedoms taken away.

Several Native women also got into office, and it was with tears of joy that we celebrated with them, making chilli, soup and sandwiches, for the masses that also came in to share in this victory for us all, from reservation to reservation.

I’m off now to the Santee Sioux reservation in Nebraska to spend the rest of the week doing Indigenous women’s empowerment facilitation because I know that this is where the fight must continue on, but I’ll leave you with some of these pictures we took along our journey.

I’m not in total agreement with the whole “First Americans” slogan, but I’m proud to stand here with Diane Kastner from the Lower Brule reservation, who ran for House District 11.

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We interrupt our regular programming to deliver your Shameless reminder to vote, plus a fresh votin’ video off of the YouTubes.

As my recently-transplanted-Canadian-friend-now-living-in-the-States-and-able-to-vote said:

Please go vote tomorrow. It doesn’t take much of your time and your employer is required to let you have the time needed to go vote. It’s very very simple. You can find where your voting location is on your computer or even on your phone so there’s no excuse about not knowing where to go.

And saying “I dislike politics so I’m protesting by not voting” isn’t true. That’s not a protest, that’s laziness. If you refuse to vote on behalf of yourself, go vote on behalf of the billions of people in the world who desperately wish that they could have a voice in the US presidential elections. Otherwise it’s like you were handed a winning lottery ticket and decided you were too lazy to go cash it in. Take a few minutes to watch the video below. (Yes, I know the freeze frame has Tom Cruise and so you’re like “what the hell?”. Watch it anyway.)

And the video:

I realize that Shameless is Canadian and very, very few of us (cough) can vote in Tuesday’s election. Having said that, that doesn’t mean that some of us (um, me?) aren’t completely and totally obsessed with it, much like our American friends. Yesterday I broke down and cried like a baby in the final ten minutes of Obama’s Closing Argument speech (he said the word “Gay” in a positive way), laughed my ass off during Obama’s Jon Stewart appearance last night (he made a joke about how sharing toys in kindergarten made him socialist), and am frantically putting together an election party (the Obama family chilli recipe!)

I’ve been tear-jerkingly, curse-word swearingly, irrationally emotionally invested in this election for well over a year now, and in the final week I’m really starting to panic. It’s foolish to believe that this election just effects Americans and not the entire world, and I think so many of us outside of the US watch in fear that, despite how well everything is going, something might go terribly wrong.

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My bags are packed and ready to hit the ground running until the election in South Dakota to mobilize against the proposed abortion ban and how this will specifically affect Native American communities which are quite populous in the state.

But before I leave, I want to introduce you to some amazing women who are nothing short of warriors that make up Women Run!

Women Run! is the umbrella organization for progressive pro-choice Native American women running for the state legislature: among them are some of my personal heroes; Charon Asetoyer, Theresa Spry, Diane Long Fox Kastner, and incumbent Senator Theresa Two Bulls (the first, and so far only, Native American woman elected to the State Senate, now running for a third term).

If you can spare a dime, or even just a letter or word of support, please do, it is sorely needed and their contact information is all listed on the website.

Wish us luck and prayers, and hope that women will not have their right to choose taken away in an area that already marginalizes them in so many different ways.

From the Canadian Press:

“With one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe, the British government is bringing sex education to all schools in England, including kindergarten-age children. While countries like France, Holland and China already require sex education, few places demand that it be introduced at such a young age.

English schools now are required to teach basic lessons on reproduction as part of the science curriculum. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have separate education departments and standards. Only Scotland makes sex education voluntary.

The government hasn’t detailed what the new curriculum will look like, but schools will be asked to provide lessons on relationships and contraception, topics not previously required. Lessons will become more sophisticated as kids get older.”