Feminism | Posted by Morgan SW on 03/8/2010

Oh *sigh* Canada

Recently there has been talk in Canada about changing the national anthem to be gender-neutral. A week or so ago, Governor General Michaelle Jean asked the Conservative government to review the national anthem and to consider changing it to be gender neutral. Changing, for example, a phrase saying ““True patriot love in all thy sons command” to “True patriot love thou dost in us command.”

Following this there was a huge outcry from Canadians saying this issue doesn’t really matter, and that sexism doesn’t exist anymore and we shouldn’t be wasting our time with such an inconsequential issue.

Here’s the thing, I do agree with some of these things. Considering the uproar that happened when Stephen Harper prorogued parliament at the end of 2009, the Conservative…

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Feminism, Pop-Culture | Posted by Satah C on 03/8/2010

Language Matters: Canadian National Anthem Edition

In Canada recently, there was a movement to officially change one of the lines in the anthem from “in all thy sons command” to something more gender-neutral. When I heard the news, I quietly applauded it as a symbol of an immensely positive thing: it was tiny, but showed that thought was being put into the language we use and support. I then moved on with my life and kind of forgot about it.

I got concerned when I saw hordes of my facebook friends joining groups like SAVE OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM!! and NO TO CHANGING THE CANADIAN ANTHEM!!

I’ve just read multiple reports that the government has backed down, deciding not to change the line.

I repeat: they wanted to change a…

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Feminism | Posted by Julie Z on 03/5/2010

But You Don’t Act Like A Feminist?

high school, must accurately portrayed in Disney's HSM movies

High school is a magical place. Throw a bunch of horny teenagers who are trying to figure out who the hell they are into a building that looks more like an insane asylum circa 1960 than a place of eduction. Add an average of 4 hours of sleep to trigonometry and there you have it: a group of completely accepting, totally open minded individuals.

Except not at all.

To some extent, I can understand why there are so many teenagers who are pretty close-minded. For one, we’re young. We haven’t had a lot of life experiences or been exposed to that much (relatively). Of course that’s not always true, but there are indeed…

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Awareness, Feminism | Posted by Jaded16 on 03/3/2010

Someone Needs To Take The Negative PR Off Of Abortion’s back

abortion in India: not everybody feels this way

As I was reading this post on “Abortion Doulas” I got to thinking about being pro-choice, abortion in general and about abortion in India in particular (as this is where I live). Out here, we tend to look at abortion as something shameful, disgusting, a thing to keep under wraps. No “good Indian” girl ever gets an abortion. If she does, people whisper about her in hushed tones for what she did was indeed disgusting. Interestingly, this is the attitude for abortion only for single women, unwed mothers etc. Within the sanctity of marriage, many women are forced to abort their unborn female fetuses. That isn’t entirely looked down upon. In fact, aborting…

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Feminism | Posted by Nona Willis Aronowitz on 03/1/2010

Thoughts on “Hook Up Culture,” or What I Learned From My High School Diary

hook up culture, as demonstrated by Blair and Chuck

Debates about “hooking up,” swinging from genuine concern to hysteria on both sides of political spectrum, have been raging throughout the 2000s (Most of the freakouts over the “hookup scene” happens in the context of heterosexual relationships, since according to the majority of sexual conservatives, queer teen girls don’t have peen-in-vadge sex and therefore, as Kate puts it, “don’t exist.) And this week, it’s seemed to bubble up to the surface again. I’ve spent the day reading ruminations by teen girl expert and Teen Vogue advice columnist Rachel Simmons, the always-thought provoking Kate Harding of Broadsheet, and Amanda Marcotte, who gives us a searing and passionate rebuff of any sort of nostalgia we might have about dating rules and traditions.

This rips…

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