A key component of the campaign at McGill, both this year and last year, has been the creation of a Tumblr page consisting of photos taken by students expressing what feminism means to them. Elizabeth Groeneveld, the Faculty Chair of the Women’s Studies Program at McGill, highlighted the merits of this aspect of the campaign, and addressed some of the criticism it has received.

“I think that the format is really accessible. Some people have criticized the campaign for just being about making little blurbs about feminism, but I think that if you’re new to feminism it feels really accessible as a campaign, and if you’re not new to feminism it can maybe spark a moment of reflection on how you would want to sum up what feminism means to you,” she said.

Groeneveld stated that another criticism of the campaign has been that it portrays feminism as individualistic, rather than as a movement about collective change and social justice.
Eden Haber, the Community Engagement Facilitator for Residence Life, questioned the legitimacy of this complaint. “First of all, I would sort of question how problematic the individualization even is. I think that finding a personal connection to feminism through understanding how it can affect one’s own life can really help a person to contextualize him or herself within the feminist movement.”

“But I think that my overall response to the individualization of feminism is that if you look at the individual photos you might get that impression, but if you look at them as a collection they actually do present very much a holistic view,” Haber continued.

Nevertheless, organizers of the campaign at McGill this year tried to make changes based on the feedback that was received last year. “One of the other main criticisms with the campaign is that people don’t think very critically or engage critically with feminism which is something that I agree with,” Haber explained.

As a result, in an effort to encourage deeper analysis and critical engagement, this year’s campaign included an Anti-Oppression and Feminism workshop, a Faculty in Rez discussion about feminism held by Groeneveld, and a discussion on feminism in the media focusing on Beyoncé and her new visual album.

Commenting on these additions to the campaign, Haber voiced her belief that the workshops did have a beneficial impact. “I think that people who did a picture after attending an event tended to be more in that headspace of engaging critically and that produced a pretty interesting result,” she stated.

The last criticism which Haber claimed campaign organizers tried to address this year was the potential exclusivity of the phrase “I need feminism.” In order to combat it, the campaign “tried to really open up the statement, and so if you look online a lot of people wrote, ‘I support feminism’ or ‘I need womanism’ or ‘I am pro-feminist,’” Haber stated. “We thought that that would make it more inclusive and help the campaign reflect a greater breadth of voices.”

As organizers wait to receive feedback on this year’s campaign, Haber said that she is generally satisfied with its results at McGill. “I think it’s important to recognize everyone [has] to start somewhere. I’m happy with the campaign. Even if the campaign creates a dialogue about what’s wrong with it, I will still be happy.”

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“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.”

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In Canada, 4,000 people are waiting for an organ donation, yet only 1,803 organ transplants were performed during the past year. 185 people died while waiting for an organ.

With such a large need for organ donors, Jason Behrmann, a post-doctoral fellow at McGill in the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), questions why donor regulations exclude homosexual men. As part of the IGSF’s “Esquisses” series last Tuesday, Behrmann addressed this issue.

“These policies […] exclude a certain group from contributing to society. Gay, bisexual and MSM people have come to be called freeloaders of society.”

“Sex, gender, and sexual orientation are factors that have a huge influence on health […] and health policy,” Behrmann told The Daily. “Correspondingly, [sexual orientation] has a dramatic influence on the structuring of your healthcare system and the availability of very […] scarce resources in health.”

The late 1970s saw thousands of people infected with HIV and hepatitis, often related to blood transfusions. In particular, HIV was prevalent in the gay community at that time. In 1977, men who have sex with men – referred to as MSM by Health Canada – were banned from donating blood or organs.

This meant that if a man had had sex with another man anytime since 1977, they would not be eligible to donate. This regulation also applied to intravenous drug users, sex workers, prisoners, and anyone sexually involved with these groups, as well as people directly exposed to HIV, Hepatitis B (HBV), or Hepatitis C (HCV) infected blood, as published on the website of the Parliament of Canada.

In summer 2013, the government changed these policies to a five-year deferral on MSM. According to Canadian Blood Services, “The change means that any man who has not had sex with another man in the last five years and meets other screening criteria may be eligible to give blood.”

During the “Esquisses,” Behrmann contested this regulation, stating that technology has developed rapidly to control infectious diseases in blood, so that only 1 in 7.8 million transfusions ‘tainted’ with a transmissible disease evade the tests.

However, in the context of the five-year deferral period, Behrmann said that, “These policies […] exclude a certain group from contributing to society. Gay, bisexual and MSM people have come to be called freeloaders of society.”

“The fact that we have regulations that exclude or try to exclude men who have sex with men – an exclusively male population that’s cut out of the donor pool – inadvertently requires the female population having to make up for that slack. That burden gets placed on the backs of women.”

Behrmann also raised the issue of sperm donation in Canada.

“It seems really strange that someone is banned until the day they die, from being an anonymous sperm donor, just because they happen to be MSM.”

Behrmann claimed that these restrictions are intrusive, with the government overly involved in individual, private reproductive freedoms. He also asserted that the quality of health services received by patients from the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans* Queer (LGBTQ) community may be negatively affected, as they would not feel as comfortable consulting medical services.

“It does raise tensions and a negative perception of the gay community toward the medical community. This is rather well-known. These regulations do dissuade people from seeking medical attention,” he said.

Behrmann also looked at the gender discrepancy in the organ donor pool.

“The fact that we have regulations that exclude or try to exclude men who have sex with men – an exclusively male population that’s cut out of the donor pool – inadvertently requires the female population having to make up for that slack. That burden gets placed on the backs of women.”

Behrmann also discussed a loophole provision known as “exceptional circumstances,” which allows for organs from the MSM population to be used in life-or-death situations in which there are no available organs from other eligible populations and the patient has given consent.

This provision does not generally apply to blood or sperm donations and still prevents MSM donors from giving certain organs such as kidneys. While the overall scarcity of available organs results in up to half of donated organs coming from ‘undesirable’ populations, Behrmann emphasized that there are still many problems with this MSM donor criteria, as well as other high-risk populations.

“It reinforces this notion that organs are not equal. It’s not just a human thing, it’s a gay thing. You would have what is deemed ‘high-risk’ organs because they come from a gay donor and you would know it.”

He claimed the current policies enable the discrimination and stigmatization of homosexual men, and deter them from participation in the healthcare system.

“We look [at] how when we structure health interventions for the [MSM] population, we can inadvertently stigmatize people and force this othering and notions of unwantedness of certain population groups.”

Behrmann addressed the ways in which he believed the current donation policies could be improved.

Among others, his proposed changes included reducing the five-year ban on blood donation to 12 months. He also recommended organizing surveys and collecting data that quantify the waste produced by excluding MSM organ donations. Raising awareness of these issues for doctors would also ameliorate the issue, according to Behrmann.

Although implementing such changes would not be easy, Behrmann remains confident in the positive impact they could bring about in the future.

“The question is: now can we change these regulations that exclude broad members of the population, and still keep a very safe and effective system, without increasing the risk of disease. I believe through my proposals that we can achieve those goals.”

The graphic in an earlier version of this article stated that in 1988, a five-year deferral was introduced into the blood screening process. In fact, that year saw an indefinite deferral introduced. The Daily regrets the error.

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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.”

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Maya Cerda, the Convener of Transportation for the Council, explained that one issue facing the Montreal’s elderly population involves the lack of mobility-oriented services. Cerda highlighted challenges such as the lack of benches at bus stops, a shortage of senior shuttles, and the short timespan of traffic lights.

“We need to increase the safety and security of public transportation for our more vulnerable populations,” Cerda said at the panel. “Some bus stops have benches, but most do not. Some metros have elevators, but most do not.”

According to Cerda, this year has seen a 7 per cent increase in demand for the STM’s adapted transportation services. Adapted transportation, or paratransit, offers public transit service by reservation for those considered “a person with a deficiency caused by a significant and persistent disability (impairment), who is liable to encounter barriers in performing everyday activities,” according to the STM website.

“Despite this increase in demand for the service, we see at the same time an unprecedented 25 per cent increase of cases refused,” said Cerda.

Road crossings were also brought up at the panel, where often the time allotted to crossing does not bode well for senior citizens with limited mobility.

“We need longer red lights, especially at major intersections and better management of circulation around crossings,” said Cerda. “Even pavement in the middle of a large artery can made a difference.”

The council brings its concerns to municipal candidates in Montreal, but report having seen little results. One of the issues brought up at the meeting was the disconnect between young councillors and the aging population.

“We want municipal candidates to be educated on some of the priority issues of seniors,” said Karen Urtnowski, the council’s community organizer. “Still, we have a disappointing response from borough politicians. Over and over again I see how many of our city councillors are young and oblivious of what it is like to be old, or have back problems, or arthritis in your hands.”

Some members recounted their experiences with public transportation, particularly the challenge of bus seating.

“A very common problem with taking the bus is the lack of seating near the entrance. A common fear for elderly people is of falling when the bus lurches forward and you haven’t had the chance to sit down yet,” explained Urtnowski.

The MCW hopes the barrier of understanding between younger city councillors and seniors will be reduced once Montreal’s youth and elderly population begin to work together to improve conditions of accessibility.

“Accessibility isn’t just about wheelchairs and wheelchair ramps,” Urtnowski said. “We have a long way to go before public transportation is truly accessible.”

The next council meeting will be held October 3 and will discuss upcoming initiatives for women’s history month.

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