VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN FORUM 2001September 29 -
October 4, 2001 Government
Conference Centre What Is Forum 2001?Canadian Women’s Critical Resistance: From
Victimization to Criminalization
|
|
|
Class and Violence Against Women
-
Are poor women more likely to be attacked and if so why and by whom and how?
-
Who (meaning class and race) uses transition houses and rape crisis centres? In what ways are they the same and different from poor houses of Victorian times (forced to go there? humiliation and stigma? The unwashed and undeserving poor vs. the deserving)?
-
What qualifications to work in these centres? which class policing which?
-
What do we think of the various college level courses credentialling women? Professionalizing of the job or false advertising of the colleges?
-
Which races are identified with lower classes in Canada?
-
How and when are poor women more distrusted by authorities when reporting or complaining of sexist violence?
-
Poor women are more subject to male violence within institutions: hospitals, care homes, old age homes, orphanages, young offender jails, jails.
-
Has mandatory work for welfare increased sexual harassment on the job?
-
Domestic workers have always been prey especially under the live in care giver regulations. What is the situation now?
-
We have lost the right to welfare and any national standards regarding the rights of the poor. What impact is that having on our callers and volunteers?
-
The history of fighting sexual assault and rape of women on welfare
-
The history of fighting the sexual assault and rape of women in jail
-
So far rape centres and transition houses have been free $. Can we continue this? Should we?
-
What are the wages and benefits like in most centres? Working conditions in general? Political atmosphere? Control over our jobs and centres? The struggle between unionization and collectivity?
-
How are the structures changing the work?
-
Historical and current relationship between the women's movement (especially anti-violence movement) and the union movement).
-
Historical and current relationship between the anti-poverty movement and women's movement (especially anti-violence)
-
Historical and current relationship between peace movement and women's movement (especially anti violence orgs)
-
Disability, violence, poverty how do they compound each other for women.
-
Lack of legal aid.
-
Our new right/obligation to accommodate disabled women in our centres as workers and callers....what can we do?
|
|
Women are Angry, not Mad
-
What has changed in this 30 yrs with regard to women being institutionalized for reporting violence against women?
-
Has the social political role of tranquillizers changed?
-
Is feminist counselling a success or failure in the fight to end violence against women?
-
New counselling techniques.
-
Assessment of what feminism brought to counselling victims of violence, especially sexist violence.
-
The historical and current relationship to the anti-psychiatry movement.
-
the current state of the international confidentiality fight over records.
-
what are we to do with the women driven mad by violence and the threat of violence? what is our role? our responsibility as anti-violence organizers? how can we cope? One clash of community and movement.
|
|
The Facts, the Stats, and the Ideologues
-
The last government study (could be added to the social policy section or a government responsibility workshop).
-
Answering Fekete and the boys (could be added to the war on campus).
-
Editorial policy changes over the thirty years re rape and women's liberation.
-
Capitalist concentration of media and the blackout of feminist revolt....Take Back The Night as an example.
-
The Montreal massacre.......the names on the list......the feminist achievements we've forgotten.
-
Lepine....who made him.
-
Rebuilding our feminist thesaurus:....separatism, identity politics, gender, sex, activism, women-only, reform vs revolution, praxis, consciousness raising, animateur, womanist, inclusion, elite, class, race, "believing women", "experts in our own oppression", professionalizing...can we agree on some political definitions?
|
|
The Sexist Battle on Campus
-
Sexual harassment policies and what we think of them -if not chilly climate and not court cases then what.
-
The historical and current relationship to the student movement.
-
Women's studies and our relationship to those courses.
-
The centres of excellence on violence against women and centres of excellence on women's health and what we have gained and lost; what can we achieve?
-
The Montreal Massacre as a downhill turning point on campuses...why?
-
As the campus becomes more exclusive should we fight or abandon that venue?
-
What feminist scholars are we counting on and how can they count on us?
|
|
Violence Against Women As A Human Rights Issue
-
Have the human rights mechanisms (both Federal and Provincial) served us very well?
-
What improvements can we recommend?
-
How have Human Rights developed and changed in this thirty years? The current struggle to reintegrate social economic rights.
-
The international UN struggle to identify violence as a matter of women's human rights; a history -FAFIA a new tool for the human rights struggle.
-
The Bunch Bunch and a history of the relationship of that coalition to the Canadian women's movement.
|
|
Prostitution
-
What policy position should we take as to prostitution as violence against women?
-
What services and organizing are we doing?
-
Legalization vs decriminalization....how to stay clear and keep the heat on -Is it time to criminalize the pimps and johns? how?
-
How has prostitution changed in Canada in the 30 yrs for the women, as a business, in the law, in our centres, in the movement?
-
International migration of women as prostitutes; how much from where to where?
-
Canadian immigration policy as affecting prostitution.
-
Neighbourhood organizing, how to denounce prostitution and not prostitutes.
-
Who are the prostitutes....the disabled, psychiatrized, destitute, abused? The studies and our callers.
-
Save the babies; prostitution as child abuse.
-
Sex tourism from Canada, what can we do?
-
Tourism in Canada and the offering of our young women to Americans, Japanese and German tourists..."dial a sailor," women in advertising our towns.
-
Prostitutes in our transition houses, how to manage the differences?
-
Prostitutes as members of our organizations. how to live with the contradictions?
|
|
When we fight Sexist Violence as a matter of Law and the Administration of Justice
-
The American experience of the Violence Against Women Act.
-
The promise and disappointment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
-
What is the federal government responsibility to end sexist violence against women?
-
What has changed in this thirty years...charter, rape shield law, loss of the crime rape in
-
favour of the crimes sexual assault, loss of the welfare liberal democratic state, devolution to the provinces, glorification of capital, internationalization of the women's movement including the anti violence wing.
-
Fighting the 'f' ing fathers.....incest, fathers rights to custody and access, the harm done by Senator Cools.
-
Sexual harassment policies in public institutions, john schools, mediation in family court, restorative justice in cases of criminal violence as diversions effectively decriminalizing violence against women.
-
The case of the murder of RenaVirk as an example of classing and radicalizing young women.
-
The case of Bishop O'CONNOR as the exempting of men from all responsibility.
-
The cases of the murder of Aboriginal women badly bungled as the too predictable norm.
-
The Vernon Massacre...........political inquiry and then what?
-
Jane Doe was a match for the police.....what did we win?
-
The Mays-Isle Inquiry and the political outcome?
-
The Kim Campbell Initiative: women, the law and the Administration of Justice......the follow up.
-
Policing Violence Against Women.....the Status quo.
-
Community Policing Initiatives............the effect on violence.
-
American style swat team policing......the effect on the community.
-
RCMP does family conferencing..........Mounties as Moaoris?
-
The effectiveness of ungovernability.........three police forces as examples...Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto.
-
Best case policing: are Edmonton and Ottawa really improved? Rumour has it on prostitution.
-
Law and order is not the way to equality.
-
Governments try to impose Victim rights are not Women's Rights.
-
A short history of the victims rights\three strikes\no tolerance American approach to "personal violence crime" and an assessment of it's success (the prison industrial complex).
-
Community policing as the new charade (rat lines, TV posse, bounty hunters,).
-
Policing like an army of occupation: Vancouver youth organize on the black panther model.
-
Demonizing the few men convicted (getting rid of the faint hope clause, longer sentences, harsher jails, dangerous offender legislation, chemical castration, talk of death penalties) what is in it for women?
-
Do women vindictively use courts and quasi judicial processes with false claims of rape?
-
Police education...what do we want and how should we get it?
-
Judicial education...what do we want and how do we get it?
-
Civil control of police.....who has a model that can work to correct cops? and cop policies?
-
Judicial review...when is a judge just a worker with a bad work record?
|
|
What happens if we fight Sexist Violence as a Peace Issue
-
Military budgets and military wives.
-
Non-violence as honorable but not mandatory.
-
Why there can't be a Truth and Reconciliation committee yet.
-
Why Christian forgiveness is unacceptable .
-
Self defence is neither just for ourselves nor accepted as a defence in the law....a short course in the legal meaning and some of the more absurd cases.. including Gitkate, in which although he wired the house with explosives and he worked for the RCMP, the trial judge could not see her actions as self defence.
-
How mandatory arrest policy has become in practice arrest or threat of arrest to both.
-
How police ignore calls for help from women until they can call in the swat team and call it an military action.
|
|
Social Policy -- What if we fight Violence as an Impediment to Women's Equality
-
The short herstory of federal government social policy initiatives to establish women's equality....for example, the vote, the equal pay check, day care, health care, education, criminalizing of violence against women, the charter, guaranteed annual income.
-
Could invite past Status of Women workers, or even old politicians to speak to say why they abandoned the project of equal citizenship: it was during Trudeau's era that women were given a break toward formal equality with the creation of the Secretary of State's office responsible for the Status of Women..the Liberals at the time meant to take responsibility to achieve the equal status of women. What happened?
-
Three women Members of Parliament tried to work cross party to do some good toward ending violence, two of whom are Mary Clancy and Dawn Black. Together they produced the War on Women report....could we ask them back on a panel for instance since that is as good as it ever got.
-
The end of Secretary of State's Women's Programmes, The Advisory Council and the ever shrinking Status of Women Canada... the financial starvation of NAC ? What has it meant, what is the alternative (would past feminist leaders in these roles come if we asked....Doris Anderson, Sunera Thobani, Judy Rebick, Glenda Simms).
-
The great devolution scam.........on equality rights, women centre mandates and the reduction of anti-violence centres to being a feminist red cross.
-
Which party is offering what programs toward ending violence against women?
-
If the dead beat dads get Anne Cools as their personal Senator, where is ours? Have we asked them?
|
|
Racism and Violence Against Women
-
We can prove women of colour get raped and beaten more often......collect up our centres data.
-
How many Aboriginal women are still being raped and beaten by police........from our records and the famous case including Ramsey of the last ten years compared to thirty years ago.
-
Residential schools as centres of sexual abuse....reckoning with the past.
-
Compare the rape and beating of Aboriginal women in Canada on reserve and in the ghettos with the Indian both Hindu and Moslem experience of village women raped and beaten by police.
-
Men rape within their own race group and every group held below them........from our records and the famous cases.
-
The continued mistreatment of women in the court room is much worse for women of colour and aboriginal women from judge to lawyers to witness. what new strategies can we apply?
-
Must we fear the modern versions of lynching that is the history of American law and lawlessness?
-
Men who violate women are more likely to get jail time if they are men of colour or aboriginal men. Does that mean we should concentrate on getting white men jailed, or on protecting the rights of men accused and men convicted?
-
Police brutality to men of colour and Aboriginal men seriously interferes with access to justice for abused wives and mothers.........what is our recourse....how can we campaign?
-
The herstory and current status of our relationship with anti racist movement and Aboriginal rights movement.
-
The herstory of women of colour and Aboriginal women using our political services..the numbers and struggles.
-
The herstory of women of colour and aboriginal women volunteering and working in our centres.
-
The American herstory of the struggle over Aegis...the victory of the women of colour and then the loss of the magazine: was it the abandonment of middle class white women or the favouring of race over gender that lost us the great tool AEGIS...........maybe we could find a few of the Americans involved (we could definitely post to the web or copy in print the great old mags...Vancouper Rape Relief has them all). What lessons can we draw?
-
Racialized and gendered immigration and the plight of the illegal immigrant...a transition house experience.
|
|
The Particulars from Quebec
-
The book of theory after the massacre.
-
What is in the charter that we haven't achieved?
-
Advantages of the legal system.
-
How is the relationship of women's groups to government different?
-
Take Back The Night at its best.
-
Memories of getting the vote... Femmes en Tête...there are still women around who were active then. Could invite Madeleine Perron and others like her.
-
A different relationship to intellectual workers.
-
A successful research model.
-
The reformation of les femmes du Québec...La "coalition des treize" with paid staff.
-
Class and race in Quebec situations of violence against women...the new consensus built on the march.
-
The new internationalist perspective.
-
The role of the church in women's institutions and actions.
|
|
What Shall We Do About The Men
-
The rapists who pay the rent.
-
The fathers who hate women .
-
The complacent patriarchs.
-
The men who want to be women.
-
The boys who get blamed by men.
-
The men who will be boys.
-
The boys abandoned by men.
-
The men who won't wear condoms.
-
The men who buy women.
-
The men who buy children.
-
The 'heroic' white ribbon men .
-
The sexist anti racist men.
-
The sexist anticapitalist men.
-
The men's movement in all its forms.
-
The herstory of organizing in alliance with groups of men trying to support feminism and an end to violence...who is left standing.
|
|
Canadian Feminist Artists Who Have Aided The Movement (especially violence) in the Thirty Years
-
"She is god like and war like" (what is her name), the folk singer who supported wavaw, the one who funded us recently from the cross country women fair, could any of them be called us, Claire Kahunzic, musicians of all kinds but also visual artists and video, the one who did rule of thumb that Janet met, maybe nettie wilde, maybe the movie producer, louise or clichettes in their current lives, need someone to gather up performers and visual artists and producers to see what we could do together..Sandra the comedienne, Shirley Douglas, who is the great sexy blues guitarist who moved to Alberta?
When We Fight Violence Against Women As a Matter of Health
-
Oppression as ill health...the merits of the determinants of health approach...maybe Monica Town send would come and discuss her book
-
Basic good health rests on women being able to self determine and having the basics of nurturance available for their use, individually and collectively
-
How much health damage is done to women in order to keep women under sexist control ? The numbers of women, the dollars spent on health care, the permanent disabilities, the fear level and fear costs directly caused by men's physical blows and threats of blows to women.
-
How much money has been claimed by health agencies from the federal dollar in the name of violence against women in the last decade....since the conservative initiative. How much went to ant-rape centres or transition houses in the name of prevention or treatment prevention?
-
How much are drugs still the social sedative, preventing women's acting out?
-
In what way is violence toward women treated successfully as a mental problem of men? What is wrong with anger management as a model? What is available of misogyny as madness? When will a critical mass allow this to work? how much consensus do we have to win before sexism especially violent sexism is seen as sick? Is there a model in any other struggle against the dehumanizing of the oppressed?
-
What medical programs have helped ameliorate the effects of violence against women?
-
The medical kits for forensic evidence...what use...what protections for women from DNA misuse, victim blaming from alcohol and drug samples, unnecessary pain and embarrassment...the new RCMP kit control...
-
Has the hospital experience changed for the rape victim battered woman or incest victim? Are more women reporting to them? are social workers and nurses identifying more cases? what is the comparison of numbers of recent cases going to our centres, cops?
|
|
Feminism is International
-
What is the particular contribution of Canadian feminists to the struggle against violence and
toward equality? -
What is the history of the world wide struggle to fight rape, wife abuse, incest in the second wave of feminism...can we gather somewhat of a map of dates of actions?
-
In the industrialized west transition houses and anti-rape centres and womens centres have
been developed as specifically feminist institutions...are there others in other parts of the world...what made them grow here...are they exportable? Russians, Peruvians, Brits, South Africans. -
The rape shield law has been copied widely..........what can we see together.....Australia, Isreal, England?
-
Mass demonstrations have huge impact on social policy.., for example in India, Pakistan, Latin American, the march organisers from Quebec.
|
|
In Movement Matters
-
Transition house issues........rules and regs that infantalize women, encroaching therapy, the arrogance of life skills, institutionalized women, the underground railway expectation
-
Rape Crisis Centres issues..........never ending training.
-
What are the most damning criticisms delivered by victims? What advances are we making on being responsive without being run by victims?
-
Is it still reasonable to say all women are victims in this context?
-
Women's centres.
-
Rape Crisis Centres.
-
Demos and Protests.
-
December 6 events.
-
Why we need CASAC ...opening membership and policy.
-
Why we need FAFIA and NAC etc.
-
How to coalesce internationally.
-
No paper of our own...A Canadian media strategy.
-
The Internet...A strategy for anti violence groups.
------------------------------------------------
About ACCCV:
We are a Pan Canadian group of sexual assault centres who have come together to implement the legal, social and attitudinal changes necessary to prevent, and ultimately eradicate, rape and sexual assault. As feminists we recognize that violence against women is one of the strongest indicators of prevailing societal attitudes towards women. The intent of the Canadian Association is to act as a force for social change regarding violence against women at the individual, the institutional and the political level.
Together we will provide a mechanism for communication, education and mobilization to alleviate the political and geographical isolation of centres in Canada. We will also support and encourage efforts to create a society in which all members of that society have the rights of social, economic and political equality.
As the only pan Canadian organisation of sexual assault centres in Canada, CASAC has political alliances with other national groups whose work promotes women’s equality and anti-violence. In addition to being CASAC members, many of our centres belong to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada’s largest feminist coalition. As a national group we are members of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA), a coalition of 40 equality-seeking non-governmental groups whose work is to promote Canadian women’s equality at home and in the International arena. CASAC is also a member group of the Pan Canadian March committee, organising Canadian women to the World March of Women 2000, an international action initiated by the Fédération des Femmes du Québec (FFQ).
