This is a further update of the activism being undertaken by friend and fellow skeptic Jamie here in Vancouver. You can read part one here:
So shortly after I posted about what I had accomplished in the first month (including the inciting incident which prompted someone else to start organizing these demonstrations), I stepped out for my fourth week of protest. Of significance, I was approached for an interview with a youth-focused media co-op organization called Y57. I had changed my sign that week, and that had a strange effect on the outcome of my demonstration — but I wouldn’t know about just how strange until a week later. However, the immediate effect was that the end to slut-shaming and rape-speak we had observed a week earlier was now reversed. Read about week four in this post.
Somehow or other, but most probably the effect of gender dysphoria from week four’s round of Blatant Sexism Fuelled By Being Socially Read As Female, my thoughts went to a very dark place. I began thinking about how many people I have personally lost to aggravated suicide, as well as people I have survived in a very hostile social atmosphere that frequently robs us all of some truly exceptional souls. But I also began thinking about this because of the case of Bei Bei Shuai, who attempted suicide while 30 weeks pregnant, and who is now facing 45 to 65 years in prison on charges of murder and attempted feticide in the state of Indiana. Read more about it if you dare.
And then week five came. It was raining heavily, and with my politically impersonal sign already written out (atypical for me), I stepped out in attire that obscured my shape and gender. And that’s the week that all the weird came out in hostile force. I never before believed that I was actually safer in my underwear than fully covered, but that is a reality I can no longer ignore. Read more about what it’s like to experience sexism from both sides of the same coin while being dumped on by the skies in this post.
Go read the rest. Some pretty gripping (and scary) stuff in there.
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You are so awesome, Jamie (I know you’re reading this). Keep up the good work. If I were there in Vancouver, I’d come and join you for a spell.
<3 thank you.
Jamie, you are amazing, and thank you for blogging about your experiences.
Crommunist, thanks for the link.
I’ve been reading through all the posts and came across the bit about “Pregnancy Care Centres”. Ugh. I went to high school in Burnaby (Burnaby Mountain Secondary) for eighth grade, got okay (it didn’t mention abortion) sex ed in gym from the gym teacher. Tenth grade, in Langley (RE Mountain Secondary), we got a worker from a Crisis Pregnancy Center (I almost shit my pants when I saw the first slide, I knew what those words meant back then). -shudder- The lies. And I was the one seen as in the wrong because when abortion came up I got fed up and raised a few counter-points. If only I’d had advance warning or a laptop…
It was around that time that I remember seeing “WARNING: WILL NOT PROVIDE INFORMATION ABOUT ABORTION” to all the Birthright and other assorted CPC ads on the Skytrain. Those stickers are gone now; the ads are still running. Sigh.
I wonder if the anti-choicers are going to be back there this Saturday. I’ve developed a boiling hatred of them from simply trying to fucking deal with them and counter their bullshit. I don’t think that there is any position more representative of regressives and their dishonesty than anti-cho…oh, I’m sorry, pro-life.