For the love of purple

Purple is a special colour, especially when it comes to anti-violence. Around the world, purple ribbons have been used to raise awareness about domestic violence, sexual harassment, bullying and homophobia. And purple is connected to International Women’s Day and various campaigns including our May Be Me Campaign to prevent violence against women and youth.

Purple has other virtues, in my humble opinion. So, in honour of purple, May Be Me and Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I would like to share some “purplespiration” fashion with you. If you’d like more, you can always check out May Be Me Campaign on Pinterest.

Purple nails

I really love nail polish. As a musician who uses my fingers a whole lot, I get discouraged from putting it on. But nail polish has such appeal to me because of the art and self-expression of it, not to mention the fact that everyone with fingernails or toenails can use it. It’s quite socially acceptable in ways other make up is not. Think of it. Parents who have an issue with their children using lip gloss and eye shadow often cave on nail-painting. After all, it’s not far from finger painting, right? And men and boys who use make up might have more room to explore nail polish – other things seem to be a terrible no-no in this strict gendered society. But somehow, nail polish is a “lesser evil”.

All that in mind, can someone show me how to do this? Not only is it purple, it’s bunny-purple.

(From apollopolish.blogspot.com)

I also have a thing for dapper men’s clothes. This is the best of all worlds.

(From rarareid.wordpress.com)

Geometric stylization, anyone?

(From weheartit.com)

(Apologies for the “monster coming at you” pictures. Surely there’s another way to take pictures of nice nails.)

Purple earrings

A similar thing can be said about the accessibility of earrings. But I just like them because, having short hair, you can actually see and enjoy them.

Triangle shapes might be my favourite, but I’m not sure I’m telling the truth. I got a lotta earrings. These are made of woven clay.

(From etsy.com)

I also enjoy contrasting colours. This is very May Be Me-appropriate, don’t you think?

(From artfire.com)

And I’ve found something I desperately need. How “Video Killed the Radio Star”.

(From oooaccessories.highwire.com)

Purple boots

I used to think I really liked shoes, but it turns out that boots are what I appreciate most. Not for their higher price point. Just for the fact that I feel super-fancy wearing ‘em. Last year, someone rocked purple boots at our May 31 May Be Me Celebration and I’ve been on a quiet mission ever since to find a pair myself.

I’m not fussy for suede, being on the colder part of Turtle Island and its streets paved with salt, but dude. These do not help a woman like me recover from her shameful Trekkie past. I find myself having trouble typing. Both hands spontaneously put themselves in live-long-and-prosper formation.

(From stylehive.com)

Another May Be Me must?

(From fashiontribes.typepad.com)

What an interesting design.

(From pinterest.com)

And I leave you with these to contemplate. Just think about it.

(From outletchristianlouboutinsale.org)

May Be Me Dialogue: Law Reform, Gender and Disability

May 1 marked the launch of our May Be Me Campaign to prevent violence against women and youth (and also marked the start of Sexual Assault Prevention Month). There are lots of ways to participate in the campaign. You can take up the fundraising and awareness-raising challenge by registering online, choosing how you’ll express yourself in purple on May 31, and gathering support from family and friends. You can also attend one of our upcoming events, including the big celebration night on May 31, Preventing More Histories of Violence.

On Wednesday May 1, we held a May Be Me Dialogue event featuring Fran Odette, Faculty Member with the Assaulted Women and Children Counselor Advocate Program at George Brown College. Fran has worked in the anti-violence movement for many years and is one of the authors of The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability: For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain, and Illness. In her Dialogue, Fran explored how our society’s legal policies and procedures have made women with disabilities vulnerable to violence and addressed prevention in that context.

That the legislative framework surrounding disability envisions a medical model as king struck me most in Fran’s presentation. Of course, the power of the medical model means that people with disabilities are generally not considered experts of their own experiences nor the ones entitled to make choices for their own lives. How much more would this skewed perspective apply to women living with disabilities and experiencing violence? Non-disabled women lose a lot of control and connections when they’re facing gender-based violence. For disabled women, already caught in a conundrum where others are afforded rights over their lives, this loss of control and connection is compounded all the more.

Here’s a clip from Fran’s presentation.

Genetic Vulnerability or Genetic Responsiveness? Canadian Domestic Violence Conference (part two)

Brenda Adams, M.D., RCC, is a faculty member with the City University of Seattle Master of Counselling Program on Vancouver Island. She presented “Genetic Vulnerability or Genetic Responsiveness? Implications for Social Responses to Violence” at the Canadian Domestic Violence Conference, a particularly interesting workshop based on gene environment research.

She noted that, in the 1980s, genetic research centred on a search for “the gene for X” – whether “X” was cancer or heart disease or violent behaviour. Of course, the workings of human development and behaviour is much more complicated than that and a paradigm shift happened in the 2000s where researchers centred on associations and how genes interact with the environment.

I can see how the “search for X gene” is problematic. What would our society do if they did find “a gene for violence” and what would happen to people who carry it? But ethical implications of association-related gene research also abound. Many of the variants researchers identify occur in a large percentage of the population – 25 to 80 percent, even. You have to wonder how meaningful the findings about a variant are if nearly everyone has it. And researchers tend to focus on negative relationships between genes and environmental stressors. That is, they search for genes impacted by negative triggers – experiences of violence, neglect and abuse, for instance – and negative behaviours that arise from them. Perpetration of more violence, for example.

This search for risk and vulnerability seems to be a negative bias in gene environment research. But Adams pointed out fascinating findings often overlooked in the literature. For example, a study by Caspi et al. (2002) found that low levels of the Monoamine oxidase A enzyme (MAO-A), associated with what someone termed the “warrior gene”, plus maltreatment from a young age leads to adult anti-social behaviours including violence. But what they failed to acknowledge is that when there is no maltreatment, subjects with low MAO-A levels show lower levels of anti-social behaviour compared to subjects with “normal” MAO-A levels.

And there are a host of other studies about gene-related enzymes, dopamine receptors and allele variants with this “crossover” effect: people who have so-called “gene vulnerabilities”, when in positive environments, seem to do better than those without. Foley et al. (2004) acknowledge this “responsive effect” and Adams noted that perhaps the studies find that those with “vulnerabilities” are simply more responsive to their environment. That’s not a bad thing at all. It means that if they were to get into a cycle of violence and risky behaviour, they may be more responsive to treatment than the rest of the world, those with supposedly no “gene vulnerabilities”. It begs the question: if there really is an association between violence risks and those with “responsive gene makeups”, is prison really the right environment to encourage non-violent, socially safe behaviour? Shouldn’t every effort be made to provide treatment in positive environments to this group of people, because unlike the rest of the population, treatment could really work for them?

Adams chronicled a lot of studies to demonstrate how contemporary genetic research very much confirms the importance of our environment, and that researchers should attend to the fact that “vulnerabilities” seem to be found only when their attentions narrow in on the bad. What about the inherent advantages of so-called “gene vulnerabilities”? And we shouldn’t assume genetic variation, low levels of this or that enzyme or long and short alleles, always spells trouble, deficiency and risk either. There is much benefit and resilience to be had in genetic diversity. That’s what makes talk of medicating people to adjust gene factors so problematic. Instead of “pharmacological eugenics” to force someone’s genotypes to act differently, to change people to suit their environment, we should explore making environments better for everyone.

I find this subject particularly fascinating because, just like old timey eugenics and phrenology, contemporary gene studies still focus on race and gender in a very stereotyping way. Sure, it’s cloaked in science-speak. But a short examination of the research identifies expected “deficiencies” and “advantages” in various populations and there’s usually no acknowledgement of even the possibility of negative biases in methodology and interpretation. What I appreciated most about Brenda Adam’s presentation is that she identified hidden alternative interpretations and research biases in the very studies that supposedly show violence-related genetic vulnerabilities amongst “the usual suspects”.

For a much better explanation of all this, out Brenda Adam’s presentation notes.

Accomplishments and challenges in domestic violence prevention: Canadian Domestic Violence Conference (part one)

At the end of February I attended the Canadian Domestic Violence Conference. Many of the sessions and keynotes were very interesting and I’d like to share things that stood out to me.

One of the keynotes, “Looking back to see our way forward: Recognizing accomplishments and facing challenges in domestic violence prevention”, was presented by Myrna Dawson. She researches “trends and patterns in violence” and “social and legal responses to violent victimization” and conveyed positives and negatives of what’s been happening when it comes to the most common form of domestic violence, that against women by men partners. She started off by noting changes in the way this violence is addressed. For example, it is now often viewed as an aggravating factor in sentencing in the legal system. And there has been an increase in domestic violence courts and shelters since 1996 – even if the big need for shelter beds still isn’t met. There are also more treatment programs for men who abuse and “victim-witness” support programs than in the past.

These are promising signs and they seem to have positively impacted perpetration of domestic violence. Canadian statistics do show a decreasing longer-term trend in intimate partner homicides. But rates of intimate partner murder of women have always been higher than that of men and there has been an upswing in intimate partner murders in recent years. And the old vulnerabilities yet remain. For instance, Aboriginal women and women in common-law relationships are still more at risk of intimate parter murder and violence.

Dawson made reference to an “exposure reduction framework”.

• Increased gender equality reduces violence: higher employment rates and income for women does seem to lead to less of this violence, but higher education doesn’t reduce women’s risk of it. Instead, it reduces men’s risk of perpetrating the violence.
• Changing relationship structures: nowadays, women are getting married and having children later in life, and that does seem to increase women’s choices in leaving and staying out of violent relationships.
• Increased services and resources: as mentioned before, the growth of treatment, shelters and programs and changing law practices does seem to reduce violence.

But the impacts of services, resources and legal changes are more complicated to measure, Dawson noted. She turned again to homicide statistics, which are less subject to reporting biases and errors. Dawson’s research found that since 1974, intimate partner killers have been more likely to be found guilty and convicted of murder. Yet these cases are also more likely to be resolved by guilty pleas, which tends to lead to lesser sentences. Dawson noted that there is a prevalent stereotype operating in the background here – that a woman who “decides to stay” in a violent relationship is seen as somehow “contributing to her murder”. It’s demonstrated in the fact that sentencing is higher for those who kill estranged partners than those who kill partners they are still with.

It’s very much a legal system thing to assume everyone has full autonomy in their choices. The system doesn’t know how to handle the fact that people who are abused by a loved one face a very different set of boundaries and risks. Of course, the crass “she should just leave” judgement seems to crop up everywhere in our society, it’s just a bigger deal when the legal system’s power reinforces and acts on the basis of it.

And this is where things seem to have stayed the same: stereotypes about women who face abuse. Dawson notes we’ve missed the boat if we’ve relied on media as a vehicle for change, because news sources so often rely on legal actors to frame the issue of domestic violence, and they do it with a “crime of passion” mentality. It blames those who are victimized, excuses perpetrators and doesn’t pay attention to factors of premeditation. Some of the media studies Dawson referred to does show windows of hope, but there’s still a need to understand and challenge the impact of stereotypes, especially in the legal system where they have some heavy consequences.

Check out the slides from Myrna Dawson’s presentation.

We All Have a Role Forum

April 21 is the start of National Victims of Crime Awareness Week and May 1 is the beginning of Sexual Assault Prevention Month as well as the focus of 2013′s May Be Me Campaign.

In light of these special awareness dates, METRAC is hosting We All Have a Role, a free forum to challenge sexual violence, on Friday April 26 from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM at North York Civic Centre in Toronto.

It’s an excellent opportunity for students, youth, service providers and other community members to discuss challenges and opportunities in addressing sexual violence. It centres on partnerships and collaborations that can make a difference in the lives of survivors of sexual violence and their supporters.

Workshop and panel topics include:

• collaborating to end sexual violence
• justice system responses to sexual violence
• community responses to sexual violence
• youth organizing to prevent and respond to sexual violence
• unpacking the man box: engaging boys and young men to end violence
• new technology to prevent and challenge sexual violence
• survivor-led responses to sexual violence

Admission is free but registration is required. A Community Safety Fair will be held during lunch – if you are part of an organization or group with relevant materials to display at the fair, fill out our PDF application form.

This Forum is funded by Department of Justice Canada and the May Be Me Campaign. Thank you to our partners, supporters and presenters: Springtide Resources, Toronto District School Board, Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape, Victim Services Toronto, White Ribbon Campaign, Woman Abuse Council of Toronto and WomenatthecentrE.

For more information, please contact us at 416-392-3135 or info@metrac.org.

Sexualization of children and sexual violence

Sexualization of children in media, especially of young women and girls, has long been a topic of heated debate and discussion. The American Psychological Association says that sexualization occurs when:

a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics; a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy; a person is sexually objectified — that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.

Of course, many articles and research point to harmful psychological, emotional and developmental impacts of early sexualization. But the issue is complicated and involves intermixed dynamics of age, gender, race and class. Bragg et al. (2011) notes that “parents’ and children’s perceptions of the issue are more complex than is typically assumed within the public debate; and that this in turn points to the need for more sophisticated responses at the level of public policy and of education.” People interact with culture and media in varying ways and resistance is not futile in the way we live out our lives.

What do studies say about sexualization of children and its impacts? And what about the connection between sexualization and the proliferation of sexual violence against children and youth? This is where the research seems to thin out, but consistently high rates of sexual assault against young people, particularly girls, begs the question. Finally what can a parent, guardian or concerned family member do to help their children negotiate all these social and cultural forces and build their media literacy? How can they support young people to grow into healthy, rounded, safe and critical individuals?

We aim to explore these matters in our upcoming May Be Me Awareness Webinar on Sexualization and Sexual Violence (March 13, 12:00 noon EST). Register now for free and feel free to share the link with others.

Missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada

February 14 was the National Day of Action organized by No More Silence and the annual rally and march for missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. We’ve compiled a list of research and statistics about violence against Aboriginal women to highlight the issue’s broad scope – there can be no denying of a need for action and greater accountability. We encourage you to check out and share the original links.

Violent victimization of Aboriginal women in the Canadian provinces, 2009 (Shannon Brennan, Statistics Canada)

• Aboriginal women were almost three times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to report having been a victim of a violent crime. This was true regardless if the violence occurred between strangers or acquaintances, or within a spousal relationship.
• Many Aboriginal female victims of crime are relatively young and tend to be highly represented as victims of violence. Women aged 15 to 34 represented close to two-thirds (63%) of female Aboriginal victims while they accounted for just under half (47%) of the female Aboriginal population aged 15 or older living in the ten provinces.
• Many Aboriginal women in Canada have been murdered or have gone missing (Department of Justice 2010). For a number of reasons, these disappearances and homicides have been difficult to quantify through official statistics.
• Given that the Aboriginal identity of many homicide victims is unknown, it is likely that data from the Homicide Survey undercount the true extent of the homicide of Aboriginal people.

Fact Sheet: Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls (Native Women’s Association of Canada)

The statistics below are based on a database of 582 missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls as of March 31, 2010. Of these:

• 67% are murder cases (death as the result of homicide or negligence)
• 20% are cases of missing women or girls
• 4% are cases of suspicious death (deaths regarded as natural or accidental by police, but considered suspicious by family or community members)
• 9% are cases where the nature of the case is unknown (it is unclear whether the woman was murdered, is missing or died in suspicious circumstances)

Most cases involve young women and girls. Just over half of the cases (55%) involve women and girls under the age of 31, with 17% of women and girls 18 years of age or younger. Only 8% of cases involve women over 45.

Nearly half of these murder cases remain unsolved – only 53% of murder cases involving Aboriginal women and girls have led to charges of homicide, dramatically different from the national clearance rate for homicides in Canada.

Aboriginal women are almost three times more likely to be killed by a stranger than non-Aboriginal women are. Of the murder cases in the database where someone has been charged:

• 16.5% of offenders are strangers with no prior connection to the woman or girl (in contrast, Statistics Canada reports that, between 1997 and 2004, only 6% of murdered non-Aboriginal women were killed by strangers)
• 17% of offenders are acquaintances of the woman or girl (a friend, neighbour or someone else known to her)
• 23% are a current or former partner of the woman or girl

Fact Sheet: Violence Against Aboriginal Women (Native Women’s Association of Canada)

• Aboriginal women face life-threatening, gender-based violence, and disproportionately experience violent crimes because of hatred and racism.
• Aboriginal women 15 years and older are 3.5 times more likely to experience violence than non-Aboriginal women.
• Between 1997 and 2000, homicide rates of Aboriginal females were almost seven times higher than those of non-Aboriginal females.
• Community-based research has found levels of violence against Aboriginal women to be even higher than those reported by government surveys. There are many limitations to government-collected statistics. Six out of 10 incidents of violent crime against Aboriginal people are thought to go unreported.

The tragedy of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women in Canada (Sisterwatch Project, Vancouver Police Department and the Women’s Memorial March Committee)

• According to research by the Native Women’s Association of Canada, urban areas are the most risky for women and girls, finding that “70 percent of women and girls disappeared from an urban area, and 60 percent were murdered in an urban area.” This may be related to the fact that urban centres tend to have more vulnerable women as well as more predators who can perpetuate their crimes in the anonymity of a big city.
• While cases of known missing and murdered Aboriginal women are concentrated in the western provinces, no region of Canada is immune. Only Prince Edward Island does not have any cases listed in the Native Women’s Association of Canada website.

No More Stolen Sisters: Justice for the missing and murdered Indigenous women of Canada (Amnesty International)

Canadian police and public officials have also long been aware of a pattern of racist, sexist violence against First Nations, Inuit and Metis women in their homes and on the streets. But government response has been shockingly out of step with the scale and severity this tragedy. The pattern consists of the following:

• Racist and sexist stereotypes deny the dignity and worth of Indigenous women, encouraging some men to feel they can get away with violent acts of hatred against them.
• Decades of government policy have impoverished and broken apart Indigenous families and communities, leaving many Indigenous women and girls extremely vulnerable to exploitation and attack.
• Many police forces have failed to institute necessary measures – such as training, appropriate investigative protocols and accountability mechanisms – to eliminate bias in how they respond to the needs of Indigenous women and their families.

Canada: Investigate Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women (Human Rights Watch)

“Canada’s federal government should establish a national commission of inquiry into the country’s hundreds of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. This recommendation follows today’s release by the British Columbian government of the final report from the provincial Missing Women’s Commission of Inquiry.”

Missing, murdered aboriginal women in Canada deserve an inquiry (The Toronto Star)

“A public inquiry would unavoidably raise questions about broader socio-economic problems in First Nations communities and the extent to which those are the result of an unresolved history of failed government policies. It would also have to explain why 50 per cent of violent crimes against Aboriginals go unprosecuted, compared to 24 per cent in the general population, likely revealing unpleasant truths about our justice system in the process.”