“When I came to Canada I thought I found a safer space, but I found that the violence was just more subtle,” said Sophia Starosta, originally from Brazil, and a member of Action Santé Transvesti(e)s et Transsexue(le)s du Québec (ASTT(e)Q). “As a woman, as a trans* person, as an ex-sex worker, I encounter violence made by men against all kinds of people who are not men and that’s why I’m here to try to bring awareness to that.”

The Reproductive Justice League Choir opened the demonstration with songs on rape culture. Families of Sisters in Spirit, ASTT(e)Q, Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), and Women in Cities continued with speeches on gendered violence.

“We spend so much energy answering what rape culture is that we often miss out on opportunities to ask what would a world free of rape culture look like.”

“About one in four students experience sexual assault during the course of their post-secondary experience. About 80 per cent of these are women and so we realized that there was this epidemic of sexual violence,” said Bianca Mugyenyi, Programming and Campaigns Coordinator for the Centre for Gender Advocacy.

Rape culture was a highlighted topic at the demonstration. “I think rape culture is the culture of disbelief of the survivors, victim blaming, and systemic sexism,” said Julia Nadeau, an advocate for the Safer Concordia Campaign.

“The more widespread these marches and other awareness campaigns become, the greater the challenge there is to rape culture,” said Mugyenyi. “People are talking more about rape culture, and realize that it’s not acceptable to normalize, minimize, excuse, and condone sexual assault.”

Aurélie Lanctôt, a member of the McGill Law Feminist Collective, also felt the demonstration was an important step towards combatting gendered violence. “It’s important to manifest in public spaces, to remind people of issues that might not be apparent but still exist.”

Aimee Louw, another demonstrator at the event, also brought up the issue of gendered violence towards women with physical disabilities. “Over 60 per cent of women who have disabilities will experience some form of gendered violence. […] There is often a feeling that women with disabilities will take any form of sexual attention they can get and that is […] a stereotype that is damaging to a lot of women.” Louw told The Daily.

The controversy regarding McGill’s silence over the sexual assault scandal involving three football players was a topic of interest to several of the demonstrators. “Obviously gender violence is a huge issue and it’s largely ignored by the McGill administration. […] Misogyny manifests itself in so many ways and there’s a need to keep discussing that,” said Kai O’Doherty, member of the Union for Gender Empowerment.

“People are talking more about rape culture, and realize that it’s not acceptable to normalize, minimize, excuse, and condone sexual assault.”

Another demonstrator, Sabrina, felt the University could play a larger role in addressing gendered violence. “I think [universities] should have rigid rules in place where there is zero tolerance for assault at any time. In order for people to feel safe, they have to know that if something [happened] to them it would be dealt with.”

Jordana, a representative of SACOMSS, told The Daily, “We spend so much energy answering what rape culture is that we often miss out on opportunities to ask what would a world free of rape culture look like. […] We come together and march for a world free of fear, where the world belongs to everyone.”

The post Montrealers gather to fight gendered violence appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Vision 2020 is a consultation and planning process that aims to set a sustainability strategy for the McGill community. It was established in Winter 2012 by McGill’s Office of Sustainability and funded by the Sustainability Projects Fund (SPF). In Vision 2020’s 2013 Vision and Goals Report, its mandate is described as the process of turning McGill into an institution that “walks the walk of sustainability in all that [McGill does].”

Lilith Wyatt, SPF Coordinator and a founding member of Vision 2020, told The Daily that she was thrilled with the turnout and with the support. “The coolest part about Vision 2020 is that it’s not just for the community but genuinely from the McGill community.”

Vision 2020 has not always generated such successful results. Earlier in 2013, the project published a failure report outlining Vision 2020’s own missteps. “We got a little bit caught up in being a campus darling,” wrote Julia Solomon, senior communications specialist at University Services. “We let [visibility] distract us from the more basic questions: […] Are we taking advantage of this moment in the spotlight to communicate clearly about why sustainability, this process, and goals built through it, are important?”

Wyatt also reflected on these mistakes. “A university can’t be excellent if it doesn’t publicly fail and learn from it.”

Vision 2020’s first draft of the Sustainability Strategy has been met with positive feedback from other McGill organizations, such as funding from the Social Equity and Diversity Education Office (SEDE).

When discussing the projects’ dialogue with the senior administrative team of the University, Wyatt admitted, “At first what we heard from [the senior administrators] was hard for us to hear because it was a bit of a change to our original dates; however, the bottom line was that they were actually really supportive.”

Wyatt emphasized that McGill has had a long history of demanding a more sustainable campus, saying that, in the past, “there were student grassroot movements, but they were totally disconnected from high-level policies.”

The development of relationships between administration and student movements on the topic of sustainability is key in the success of Vision 2020. Wyatt called this partnership “really important in the DNA of the McGill Office of Sustainability. It has always been a partnership between the two – especially in a campus context which has held a lot of tension between the students and the administration, so it’s always been a place where students and staff have been able to find common ground.”

When asked what’s next for Vision 2020, Wyatt said, “Right now there are 51 actions, and the administration has asked us to narrow it down to a few priority actions.”

The post McGill’s quest to become a sustainable campus appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Maynard is a street worker with the community-based initiative Stella, a ‘by sex workers for sex workers’ group that strives to provide resources to, and improve the health and safety conditions of, sex workers.

Currently, being a sex worker in Canada is legal; however, certain sections of the Criminal Code of Canada (CCC) restrict the freedom with which sex workers can operate.

According to Article 210 of the CCC, “Every one who keeps a common bawdy-house is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.” However, according to Maynard, the consequences of Article 210 have the potential to profoundly affect the livelihoods of sex workers.

“A lot of women like to work together with a larger group of people, so that they can work with security,” Maynard told The Daily, “but this was made illegal by 210, which means people can be evicted, lose their apartments, and be charged criminally just for being in a place where they’re working.”

According to Maynard, this also means the workers are less likely to keep condoms and other safe sex materials onsite, for fear of the materials being used as evidence against them in a criminal charge for being found in a bawdy-house.

Among other things, Article 212 of the CCC makes it illegal for third parties to procure or solicit sex workers for clients, and makes “enticing another person to engage in prostitution” illegal.

“There’s a part of [Article] 212 called ‘living off the avails’ that makes it illegal for women who are working in the sex industry [to] hire security [… or] a receptionist to screen their calls,” Maynard said. “[There are many] things that people put in place for their safety. [These are] currently illegal and treated the same as, say pimping, or exploitation, which no one is fighting to decriminalize. They’re also treated as one and the same under the law.”

Article 213, on the other hand, details the restrictions of sex work, limiting solicitation in “public places.” Sex workers may not receive clients in the same place more than once. As a consequence, time and space for consensual agreements become limited.

“[Article 213 essentially] makes it illegal for people to actually discuss any of the details around sexual services, whether that’s negotiating condom use, or even taking time to talk with the client to feel out if this is somebody that they would or would not like to see,” said Maynard.

Some strides are beginning to make way. In 2009, sex workers Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch, and Valerie Scott brought forward their case, which came to be known as Bedford v. Canada, to court in Toronto. After a year of deliberation, in 2010, Justice Susan Himel struck down these articles on the grounds that they were in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The federal government later appealed the decision. In 2012, the Ontario Court of Appeals struck down the bawdy-house provisions as unconstitutional; however, it maintained that Article 213 – which deals with solicitation – did not go against the Charter.

The applicants of Bedford v. Canada, which is currently on appeal at the Supreme Court of Canada, argue that these articles directly violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 7 of which reads, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

In addition, the applicants also claimed that the CCC makes their right to communicate with their clients illegal, and that this is another violation of the Charter, which is supposed to protect “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression.”

“A lot of those laws that seem like they’re for women’s rights […] actually have extremely negative effects in terms of the working conditions and safety of sex workers,” said Maynard. “Those laws are not being brought forward by sex workers – they’re being brought forward by people who want sex workers to not exist in general.”

The post A look into the criminalization of sex work in Canada appeared first on The McGill Daily.