Girl Crush!

I have such a huge crush on Jill Filipovic. I can't even deal.

Here she is, taking on a right-wing blogger about the building of a "mosque" at "Ground Zero".

*swoon*

Too Many Amazing People for One Day

Usually when I make a blogroll of articles, it contains a long list of shitty news items that are incredibly depressing. Today, I'm happy to report that I'm compiling a list of must-read blog posts and articles. They're all so good that I couldn't possibly do the subject matters any justice on my own, so I'll leave it to them.

"No, I don't hate men. I distrust them". A classic blogpost from the blog "Shakesville" about this very statement. A must-read.

The epic (and let's face it, totally foxy) Jackston Katz discusses Mel Gibson's tirade against womyn, people of colour, queers, etc and how it speaks volumes about rape culture.

Salon takes on the new Rihanna and Eminem video for the song that I really, really want to hate.

Félicitations!

As a franco-ontarian and a proud Canadian, I can't love the Bloc Québécois. I just can't.

But I can love Gilles Duceppe and individual MPs from their party. And I do love Duceppe. I really do.

I met him in the context of abortion rights and dude knew his stuff. He admitted to being the first Bloc representative for Status of Women because, by his own admission, the Bloc started off with a crappy record on female representation in the party. He also called on his party to refer to the 'pro-life' movement as 'anti-choicers'. Dude was for real.

He is an also an impeccable dresser. FYI.

So I want to join in on those who are wishing Mr. Duceppe congratulations on 20 years as an MP. As one Globe and Mail comment states, love him or hate him, the other parties would do much better if they had a leader like Duceppe running the show.

Félicitations M. Duceppe!

Fact Over Fiction

As you know, I'm one of the people who has been going on and on about how killing the mandatory long-form census is a bad, bad idea.

To recap, killing it is so, very, bad because we need quality, tried and true, statistics in order to make good public policy. You can't make sound policy based on wonky facts or worse yet, no statistics at all.

But I knew that the reasoning for smashing the mandatory form had nothing to do with the so-called desire to protect 'civilian privacy'. I knew they had something up their sleeve.

The conspiracy theorist in me thought it was that they could shoot down demands for social justice issues under the guise of "You need research/data to back up that so-called claim of yours, Missy". And since they're hacking away at the census and de-funding social justice research groups, a claim of injustice would be harder to 'prove'.

Now the truth has come out: The Conservatives just don't like facts. Nope, they don't like 'em one bit.

Proof: Treasury Board President Stockwell Day has said that despite crime statistics going down, they are going to increase spending on prisons. His reasoning? "crime statistics are not accurate".

Now, if this was coming out of the mouth of anyone else, I just might believe it. Anyone who works as a front-line worker will tell you that rates of sexual assault, criminal harassment (stalking) and domestic violence are way, way higher than any statistic out there. Crimes such as these are highly under reported.

But a group as misogynist and anti-womyn as the Conservatives saying this? Sounds to me like more hogwash in an attempt to push a 'law and order' agenda. Let's not for one second fool ourselves into thinking they care about putting rapists, wife beaters and stalkers in jail. Do yourself a favour on that one.

Yet again, I don't know why I'm surprised by any of this. Of course Stockwell Day doesn't believe in facts - he's a fucking creationist!