The longest War

Cultural casualty.

Should I wear Black?

Cultural casualty

Plastic faces push me back.

Cult

   ural casualty –

She fell from constant attack.

A shared story.

Don’t know the pressures on her back.

Her choice;

Cultural causality.

À qui la rue?

I hate to say it but today's march did not embody solidarity for me. To the friendly Steelworkers Union Man who told me I was 'formidable' for coming out, this does not include you. And to the young man who helped me at the print shop last week, who recognized me and thanked me for coming out, you neither. To the person behind me who kicked my cane and did not apologize, and to those people holding banners behind me who were impatient that I was not  moving fast enough for their banner to be straight as an arrow, this is directed at you: solidarty is not just for people who walk fast. La Hausse does not just affect young able bodied CEGEP students who are anxious to jump around to the awesome marching band. We all feel the beat. Neoliberalisme affects us all, and all the people at the march today are opposed to it. Whether we are running, riding our bikes, walking, limping, rolling, being carried, strolling, wearing masks, waving flags.

I guess there's a difference between thinking the world should be shaped just in the way that I like, just to suit me, and expecting respect and solidarity, enacted not just written on signs at a march for community, a march of critique against neoliberalism and the individualistic worldview it promotes and neccessitates. I guess I've ignored this for a long time, framing it as a self indulgent frustration as opposed to a visceral experience of the anonymity and loneliness of ablist north america. I guess I've said in my head, the other times I've thought this: 'don't be emo' and then made myself laugh thinking about emo emus and the like. But its not emo, there are no emus in my apartment, and this is my experience. And I am not going to apologize for walking slow. My knee hurts, and it was hard for me to make it out at all. But this is important to me, and its important to you and let's respect that. And let's respect those Grandmères en solidarité aussi. And the guy with the Guy Falks mask in the motorized chair. Respect.

Friends, what solidarity looks like to you? Picture it and then ask 'who is excluded in this version', and then think of a way to include them.

Sand on my Shoes

The environment was never an acting point, I saw it as something out there, outside the city, I was, am, disconnected. But going to spend time at a camp on Algonquin land, hearing the bulldozers or whatever they are, at 2 am, clearing, clearing, going to the logging site, it was the first time the community had gotten there, a week after the destruction started, because the cops had been guarding the company’s equipment and not letting them through, on their own land, the elders gasped, someone said, look at the tree. Someone said, where will the animals go? Someone mentioned all the little animals like rabbits that get crushed under the machines, one man said, they don’t even use the poplar, it’s just faster to cut it all down and leave them or burn them. Later he said quietly, ‘we’re not going to win.’ When I was driving home I saw another clear-cut spot on a mountain and it hurt. There’s still sand on my shoes.

Men's Centre

Maybe if we had an equal past in which everyone had equal respect, equal opportunity, equal safety, equal responsibilities, equal space in education, then everyone would have equal right to centre with their picture on it. But our universities have not ever been, nor are they currently, equal between the genders. I have personally dealt with sexism with professors, old men, who have refused to call on me in class, yet spoke to all the men in my class. I have felt unsafe walking home from school late, have felt outrage at pretty much every class at some point or another, when professors make comments about how their woman students dress, act, their makeup, their looks, which have absolutely nothing to do with political philosophy. I have been a minority in every political science class as a feminist, as a woman who does not like it when my male counterparts speak over me with louder voices and worse ideas. I have been a minority as a woman period. I am a minority because I am a woman in university.

Men of certain cultural groups, or of certain religious affiliation, or with different bodies or minds are members of minorities, and for that many universities have measures of accommodation for them, albeit limited. Men as a whole are not a minority, nor are they in need of special measures to ensure their success. If they are not doing well en masse in university it is because they are not able or willing to compete with the newly arrived women in their fields. If they feel like minorities in university it is only because they are used to functioning in a historically exclusionary system, which blatantly favours them over women. Point blank. Men as a whole are not a minority, are not in need of special support. Statistics tell us not that men need support in university because women are overtaking them, but that men are simply not used to working as hard as women. Statistically speaking. And in a system where it is viewed as impossible and unnecessary to create a sexual assault centre that would service largely women who are abused while in university, due to lack of funds and will, it is absolutely unbelievable that a men’s centre is deemed worthy of university finances and energy. Every class I’ve been to, every time I step into my building at school I am hit in the face with the realization that universities are men’s centres. Universities are men’s centres. History classes are men’s centres. Politics classes are men’s centres. Literature classes, unless entitled women in literature, or world literature, are men’s centres. My professors’ offices, surrounded by books written by men about men’s things, or about women from the male author’s mind, are men’s centres.

Look back. Look back less than a generation ago when women were hardly in university. Are your glasses strong enough? Mine are and I see women struggling to get heard in a class. I see women being treated as cute by their all male professors. I see women being rejected because they’re newly married and it’s assumed that they’ll pop out babies soon so what’s the point of letting her into university? I see women who are disabled and whose families discourage from going to school, I’ll get you a job at the post office honey. Look back and then look around you. There are women in university. There are a lot of us. We are catching up in enrollment, and are getting good grades and grants and we are happy about this. But we have to struggle every day in school and this is because we have a sexist history. A history in which you would have gone to school and I wouldn’t have because of what is happening between my legs. Full stop. Look around and see women wearing pants, something for which my mother was sent home from high school, in the 60s, running to class, taking notes, writing papers and working hard. Look around at our diverse classrooms full of diverse people and swallow your self-entitlement. Swallow your history-denying insecurity. Swallow your coffee as you sit in class, savour it, and stop interrupting me when I speak.

In my Ears

I awoke with the sound of voices in my ears. Shakers in my ears. The sound of flapping fabric, banners billowing, harnessing the power of gusting winds.

I awoke with three hundred thousand bodies, six hundred thousand feet sending shocks through the concrete, moist grass muddy and already regenerating, stroller wheels marking a peaceful path. I awoke surrounded by chests heaving, lungs expanding, contracting with shared calls, rhythmic expressions rising up, up.

Masses of bodies forming shapes, symbols of peace and frustration, stating changes as they happen.

I awoke on the streets of Montreal; skin raised like the high note of a Mahalia Jackson run, tears in her eyes, mouth wider as it can, vocal chords reaching all the way to the clear blue sky, all the way to the pacific, piercing through tall stocks of wheat, blasting through mountains; dynamite to the ancient rock, through cities, all glass and invincible.

I heard voices as I woke up and I hear them still!

Hummingbird

Her nose brushed mine

Butterfly kisses.

Her hair was pink,

Turned into a hummingbird.

We stood by the water you were there too.

We were sitting on steps. Piano was playing.

Sparkling.

She was so beautiful.

Tattoo on her shoulder danced in the sunlight.

If I had stayed we would have gotten on a boat.

Hair dances, I think she did too.

Didn’t say a word. Words aren’t everything,

I say.

It was a moment short and calm, porcelain and strong.

Sparkling.

I stick my head out the window

Our patriarchy is just more hidden

I stick my head out the window; broad snowflakes dust my face.

Our patriarchy is just more hidden.

“We don’t do that here.”

Our patriarchy is just more hidden.

The 600 women killed by Canadian-born white bread.

The stories not covered,

Their bodies covered by dirt, not even a diligent attempt to hide.

And what sticks in our minds?

          Pig farmer.

And what stays in our minds?

          Honour killing.

And what is overlooked?

          Women are being

                   Killed

                   By men.

Expressionless face mouths the damaging, slow-motion words:

“run of the mill domestic violence.”

I stick my head out the window.

If we name the honour killing

We should name the native-killing;

The wheelchair razing;

The nameless-so-you-can’t-be-identified cowardly killings. The

Easy targets.

By any other name.

Our patriarchy is more hidden.

‘Our’ implicates me.

Compelling

Propelling myself to a place with a microphone in front of my face.

Break it down.

Better, build something up around it. We are creators. Engulf it, so it becomes a speck on an old grey stone in a wall – cemented, no longer free to roll, gaining force, picking up dirt, pebbles, an avalanche by the time

it hits.

Build, use your arms, your strength to over power it.

Stare at it and say I know you’re hiding, I know you’re there, and this game

Is over.

I stick my head out the window. Breath.

Is it honour that drives women to be plastered on billboards, for all us to see?

Honour, that keeps us quiet when that sexist joke is told – don’t embarrass yourself it’s just a joke.

Honour that prevents us from parting our lips and making sounds, opening up to the world, that knowledge that we have?

Honour, or is it shame?

By any other name.