In our first presentation, we learnt about climate change, pipelines and violence against women. Unbeknownst to me, all of these things are related to each other. It all comes down to the violence against women in indigenous communities. The Canadian government is illegally setting themselves up on the protected land to force the projects that the indigenous community has already rejected. These men who settle on the land actually harm these women, there has been a direct correlation between these camps and the women. Also, going further back in history, we learnt that homophobia and these more toxic ideals of men and women were brought with colonialism. Indigenous communities had high respect for their women and actually celebrated their LGBTQ+ community, which is known as 2 spirited. I believe the whole concept of the men setting up and taking what they want from the women (as well as their homophobia) directly correlates to Kilmartin’s anti femininity theory. Showing any compassion or emotion would be too “feminine” and that shows weakness as a man. They have to be stoic and be strong to assert their masculinity. Anything other than that would allude to maybe homosexuality or being less of a man, which is not what they’d want.
In the second presentation, two women told us explicitly about their personal experiences with racism being Muslim women in Canada. Mrs. Nadia noticeably faced more outright aggression seeing as she wears the hijab. It seemed that these women faced more discrimination for being a different race rather than being women. HOWEVER, it all stems from the same place of hatred! Why can’t these women live their lives in peace instead of fearing aggressions every day over their religion or race? Bill 21 disabled women and men from wearing certain religious symbols but enabled racists to feel more powerful in speaking out against other people. In taking down this Bill, it would give people the choice of wearing or not wearing their items and remaining unbothered!
My takeaway from everything is that the world is very far from any kind of equality. We are HUGE steps away from women being as respected as men or white people having the same rights as other races. It’s going to take another hundred years for any significant changes to come about because there isn’t enough activism. Ms.Nadia said that an important question to ask ourselves is if we’d want to be a bystander or ally. Every single person needs to work together as allies for our world to be a better place for all!
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 