Today is National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, which also com­mem­o­rates the anniver­sary of the Montréal Massacre in 1989. I am hon­oured to have been asked to read one of my poems at the Toronto Candlelight Vigil to mark the anniver­sary of this tragic event.

The fact is that vio­lence against women is an everyday reality for mil­lions of girls and women around the world. There are many kinds of vio­lence. The word “vio­lence” is related to the word “vio­la­tion” – and each time a woman’s right to be a full, self-determining human being is vio­lated because she is a woman, vio­lence against women is com­mitted. From media and adver­tising depic­tions of women as vapid damsels in dis­tress worthy of little more than objec­ti­fi­ca­tion for men’s plea­sure, to domestic abuse, work­place sexual harass­ment, date rape, mar­ital rape, the misogyny of reli­gious fun­da­men­talisms, and sexual assault and gender-based vio­lence, women, girls and trans people are still much more likely to be at the receiving end of vio­lence and vio­la­tion. These prob­lems are usu­ally worse for women who are not white, not from the upper-middle classes, and those of us who straddle mul­tiple social-cultural iden­ti­ties as immi­grants and chil­dren of immi­grants. Continue reading ‘National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women’»

Came across this sweet little video recently. Check it out for your­self

This was written as part of a response to Martha Nussbaum’s opinion piece found here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/veiled-threats

I’d like to share my per­sonal view on the burqa (face mask) con­tro­versy. My views are not based on the black-and-white, binary, false dichotomy pre­sented too often by both sup­porters of the face-mask ban and those who wish to defend the garb.

Continue reading ‘The Burqa/Niqab ban controversy’»

In the interest of embracing opti­mism, I decided to look up some quotes by famous and not-so-famous people that inspire me to approach life in a pos­i­tive, light-hearted manner. Yes, I know, quotes are some­times looked down upon, and quotes are not the only way to learn any­thing, the con­text mat­ters more in most cases. But a good quote is like a good song, a small morsel of wisdom or wit that can inspire great things in the observer’s mind. Here are some juicy ones from my ever-growing collection:

“Snatching the eternal out of the des­per­ately fleeting is the great mag­ical trick of human exis­tence.” ~Tennessee Williams

“When you per­ceive that an act done to another is done to your­self, you have under­stood the great truth.” ~Taoist saying

“Thousands of can­dles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be short­ened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha

“The most beau­tiful thing we can expe­ri­ence is the mys­te­rious. It is the source of all true art and sci­ence.” ~Albert Einstein

“To the out­side world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sis­ters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share pri­vate family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live out­side the touch of time.” ~Clara Ortega

“Nothing is so strong as gen­tle­ness, and nothing is so gentle as real strength.” ~Ralph Stockman

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” ~T. Roosevelt

“Great spirits have always encoun­tered vio­lent oppo­si­tion from mediocre minds.” ~Albert Einstein

“Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.” ~Voltaire

“True love sto­ries never have end­ings.” ~Richard Bach

“Anyone can be pas­sionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.” ~Rose Franken

“What the world really needs is more love and less paper work.” ~Pearl Bailey

“To all of us the thought of heaven is dear–
Why not be sure of it and make it here?
No doubt there is a heaven yonder too,
But ’tis so far away–and you are near.”
~Omar Khayyam

“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.” ~Lily Tomlin

Thanks to a Facebook friend, I came across this article in the Times Online which reports on zoo­log­ical find­ings that dol­phins’ brains, cul­tural and emo­tional com­plex­i­ties, and behav­iours are close to those of humans. I think this is sig­nif­i­cant because there are more and more people waking up to the real­i­ties of how we treat non-human ani­mals, and what that implies for us and our humanity, as well as the cor­re­la­tions between cru­elty towards other ani­mals and cru­elty towards humans. If you know me at all, you know this is one of the most impor­tant fields of study, reflec­tion and activism to me. Some excerpts from the Times Online article:

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unac­cept­able to keep such intel­li­gent ani­mals in amuse­ment parks or to kill them for food or by acci­dent when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dol­phins and por­poises die in this way each year.

“Many dol­phin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when cor­rected for body size,” said Lori Marino, a zool­o­gist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has used mag­netic res­o­nance imaging scans to map the brains of dol­phin species and com­pare them with those of primates.

<snip>

In one study, Diana Reiss, pro­fessor of psy­chology at Hunter College, City University of New York, showed that bot­tlenose dol­phins could recog­nise them­selves in a mirror and use it to inspect var­ious parts of their bodies, an ability that had been thought lim­ited to humans and great apes.

In another, she found that cap­tive ani­mals also had the ability to learn a rudi­men­tary symbol-based language.

Other research has shown dol­phins can solve dif­fi­cult prob­lems, while those living in the wild co-operate in ways that imply com­plex social struc­tures and a high level of emo­tional sophistication.

<snip>

Researchers have found that brain size varies hugely from around 7oz for smaller cetacean species such as the Ganges River dol­phin to more than 19lb for sperm whales, whose brains are the largest on the planet. Human brains, by con­trast, range from 2lb-4lb, while a chimp’s brain is about 12oz.When it comes to intel­li­gence, how­ever, brain size is less impor­tant than its size rel­a­tive to the body.

What Marino and her col­leagues found was that the cere­bral cortex and neo­cortex of bot­tlenose dol­phins were so large that “the anatom­ical ratios that assess cog­ni­tive capacity place it second only to the human brain”. They also found that the brain cortex of dol­phins such as the bot­tlenose had the same con­vo­luted folds that are strongly linked with human intelligence.

Such folds increase the volume of the cortex and the ability of brain cells to inter­con­nect with each other. “Despite evolving along a dif­ferent neu­roanatom­ical tra­jec­tory to humans, cetacean brains have sev­eral fea­tures that are cor­re­lated with com­plex intel­li­gence,” Marino said.

There was a time when women, black people, men­tally ill people, chil­dren, were all in var­ious ways regarded as “sub human”, as inan­i­mate objects, to be used, abused, and dis­carded. Today, we still have some seg­ments of pop­u­la­tions arguing for the lack of any rights of non-human ani­mals. This will change, in time, and our cur­rent prac­tices of cruel fac­tory farming, animal testing, breeding for enter­tain­ment, etc., will, I can say with a some con­fi­dence and a lot of hope for the sake of humanity, become more obso­lete, and become as illegal and socially unac­cept­able as slavery, child labour, ped­erasty, misogyny and eugenics are now.

Have you ever said, “I’m not gay, but…” or “I’m not bisexual, but…” as a dis­claimer before expressing how much you are attracted to someone of the same gender as you?

If you are pro­gres­sive, lib­eral, and you stand for LGBT rights, have you ever won­dered why you need to give a dis­claimer like that before expressing feel­ings that might qualify you as being bisexual?

I have.

First of all, as a bisexual woman (I prefer the term queer) who has been in rela­tion­ships with both men and women, and who is in a happy, long-term rela­tion­ship with a woman, I find it hurtful when some of my friends still qualify their own sexual desires for people of the same gender by first sep­a­rating them­selves from people like me. There’s nothing wrong with being het­ero­sexual, but there is some­thing very wrong with being het­ero­sexist, which is the idea that het­ero­sex­u­ality is the default, nat­ural, normal thing to be, and that it’s a black or white area with no variations.

If you are telling someone how you sup­port gay rights, you don’t need to keep qual­i­fying that with “I’m not gay or nothing, but…”. Similarly, if you are telling people that you are bi-curious, or attracted to someone of the same gender, then those of us who have put our lives on the line to be honest about sex­u­ality, would appre­ciate it if you could stop talking about this matter like it’s a hot potato that you are willing to sup­port in passing, but not willing to own, even when you your­self have feel­ings that would qualify you as bisexual.

Continue reading ‘(I’m not a queer or nothing, but…)’»

From Funny Or Die!

Gus Porter gets mauled by a bear, but he won’t let the socialist Canadian health care fix him up, so he’ll hike back to America.

From CBC’s Ideas radio show, I am lis­tening to the pod­cast with Nick Maxwell on the ideas about sci­ence pre­sented in his book From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution for Science and the Humanities.

A long but highly insightful con­ver­sa­tion between acclaimed authors Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji on the nature of belief, Islamism, the his­tory of Islam and Quran, and what to do in a world full of cra­zies on both the Islamist side and the racist west­erner side. Rational, thinking people of all vari­eties will enjoy this video… please watch in full, it’s worth it. Intelligent com­ments are welcome.

1. Live for the past.
2. Live for the future.
3. Think every­thing is always about you.
4. Think that you just don’t matter at all.
5. Believe that pills will solve all your prob­lems.
6. Believe that pills are stupid and use­less.
7. Do not let your­self change.
8. Believe that it is all your fault.
9. Believe that it is all other people’s fault.
10. Accept all the bad things you have heard, read or thought about you.
11. Deny any good things you have heard, read or thought about you.
12. Never think about other people’s prob­lems.
13. Think that because you can’t do every­thing, you shouldn’t do any­thing.
14. Roll your eyes while reading this list.
15. When hap­pi­ness comes, greet it with fear or guilt or resent­ment.
16. Think that you are or have bad luck.
17. Don’t express your­self cre­atively in any way.
18. Keep on trying to please and/or piss-off Mom and/or Dad.
19. Wait for someone else to come and save you.
20. Exercise only spo­rad­i­cally and only out of guilt.
21. Don’t make friends with silence.
22. Watch a lot of TV.
23. Stay away from Nature.
24. Think of every­thing in terms of black or white.
25. Take all, give nothing.

~Kiran Mehdee [June 2008]