The McGill Daily Vol105Iss12

Volume 106, Issue 12 Monday, November 16, 2015

McGill THE

DAILY

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the queerness and sexuality special issue

Table of Contents 03

NEWS

07

COMMENTARY

Environment activists pay Trudeau a Technology and slavery visit Letter “No” campaign comes under fire Type 1 diabetes and first year Intersection of Blackness and gender in law Reflecting on toxic rez culture General Assembly underwhelming Guatemalan journalist at McGill

10

SCI+TECH

Mental health and menstruation

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11

SPORTS

Soccer’s growing popularity McGill’s synchronized swimmers

12

CULTURE

CBC documentary goes to underground SHYRE wows at l’Astral Childhood, media, and Blackness Long Red Hair reviewed The Daily sits down with Hanorah

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15

EDITORIAL

Against the NEB’s colonial consultations

16

COMPENDIUM!

A revolution at SHMU

Special Issue: Queerness and Sexuality

2

News

November 16, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Climate change activists stage sit-in at 24 Sussex Four-day action sees little response from new prime minister

Mackenzie Burnett News Writer

T

hirty-four McGill students and alumni gathered on November 5 to travel to Ottawa in order to participate in the Climate Welcome event. The group joined more than seventy other activists who occupied the gates of 24 Sussex, the residence of Canada’s newly appointed prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

The Climate Welcome was planned by groups throughout Canada, but was supported primarily by 350.org, the Council of Canadians, and the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. In an interview with The Daily, Kristen Perry, a U4 Environment student and Divest McGill organizer, explained that the demonstrators’ “main demand for real climate action was to freeze tar sands expansion and to start the transition to a just and renewable energy economy.”

Transportation from Montreal to Ottawa was organized by Divest McGill, a campus environmental justice group, bringing students and members of the community to Trudeau’s residence. The McGill participants returned to Montreal on November 6 and November 7, even though the sit-in lasted until November 8.

Each day, the demonstrators delivered different sets of

‘gifts’ to Trudeau, in an effort to demand that he take real action on climate change. On the first day, Trudeau was given scientific studies, economic reports, and Indigenous treaties, all of which indicated that the tar sands need to remain underground.

In the following days, the gifts were expanded to include over one million messages from Canadians against tar sands expansion and pipelines, as well as water samples from various communities across the country. On the last day, the demonstrators delivered five solar panels.

Jed Lenestky, a U1 Environment student and Divest McGill organizer, told The Daily, “The only presents that were accepted were on the first day.” The messages, however, were both emailed to the Prime Minister and sent by mail on a USB stick.

Perry expressed that throughout the election period the demonstators’ “goal was to make climate change more of an issue in the election campaign.”

“Immediately after [the federal elections] we wanted to welcome whoever was coming into office with a Climate Welcome, showing them that the climate movement is big and growing,” Perry said.

“We wanted to be there to show [Trudeau] that we would support him in taking climate action.”

Perry continued, “[Trudeau is] planning to go to the international climate talks [in Paris] without any target essentially. He’s using [former Prime Minister] Stephen Harper’s target, which is completely inadequate. He said he needs to consult with the provinces which, of course, is a good thing. [...] But right now he doesn’t have a target. [...] We’re trying to push him, but also support him because he has the potential, I think, to be a leader in climate change action.”

The first day of action Speaking to The Daily, Andrew Stein, a U3 Environment student and Divest McGill organizer, summarized the action on November 5, the main day on which McGill participants were active.

“We marched down to 24 Sussex. Upon arriving, we split into two groups. Half of us [held a sit-in] in front of 24 Sussex, [and] half of us [held a sit-in] in front of Rideau Cottage. We voiced our demands to the Prime Minister’s office and then we converged on Rideau Hall when the executive assistant to the Prime Minister was sent down to speak with us,” Stein said.

According to Stein, demonstrators then proceeded to escalate their tactics.

“We blocked [...] Sussex Drive, at which point we were informed

Rahma Wiryomartono | Illustrator by the police that we were trespassing and officially risking arrest. However, they were on marching orders not to arrest anyone for this kind of basic civil disobedience. [...] We stayed in the street for a while, sang some songs, did some chants, demonstrated our presence, and then we took off and called it a day.”

Perry added, “After we were out there sitting for about two hours on the road itself, we got the news that the police actually weren’t going to arrest us as long as we sat there, and the Prime Minister wasn’t going to come down for the day. So we

decided at that point [that] we’d de-escalate for the day and come back with even more people the next day.”

On why he chose to attend, Lenetsky replied, “I think climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing the world.” “[Trudeau] made this promise of real change and I wanted to help hold him to that. [...] Every day we were there, the next day we came out with twice as many people. [...]

Every day we’re growing, this issue isn’t going to go away. [...] We’re not going to go away and we’re going to keep fighting until we get what we want,” Lenetsky concluded.

Unofficial “No” campaign comes under fire Student mobilization criticized for hypocrisy in VP Internal by-election

Saima Desai The McGill Daily

O

n November 11, Céleste Pagniello’s withdrawal from the race for the position of Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP Internal left Alexei Simakov as the sole candidate running for the position. The same day, two students set up a Facebook event titled “Vote(z) NO in the VP Internal by-elections.”

Ben van der Ger, a U2 Environment and Economics student and one of the two official organizers of the event, told The Daily that the event is “definitely not [an] ‘anyone but Simakov’ [movement]. The point is that the student body doesn’t need to accept a candidate that is less than what they feel is the best, and less than what they feel properly represents them.”

Evan Berry, a U3 Geography student and the other co-orga-

nizer of the event, added, “We think it’s necessary to empower the student body to vote ‘no’ if they didn’t know that was an option for them.”

The event description cites Simakov’s “inability to understand the demands of the VP Internal portfolio” as a main reason for opposing his election. Van der Ger added that Simakov’s self-professed inexperience with social equity and unwillingness to take up the responsibility makes him unfit for the role.

Berry and van der Ger have come under scrutiny for being roommates with SSMU President Kareem Ibrahim. When asked about a possible conflict of interest, Berry responded that they “have been transparent about the fact that we are [Ibrahim’s] roommates.” He added, “We are running this campaign without an association with [Ibrahim].”

“This is not coming from room-

mates of [Ibrahim], this is coming from constituents of SSMU who do not feel adequately represented by Alexei Simakov,” Berry continued.

“The reason why we’re doing this is because we care about our campus, and we care about student politics.”

“SSMU elections should not be a shitty episode of Jerry Springer.”

Evan Berry, “No” event co-organizer Berry and van der Ger have repeatedly denounced the personal attacks that are rife in current and past SSMU election campaigns.

They told The Daily that they have tried to run a transparent mobilization free from “dirty tac-

tics,” going so far as to publicly condemn as well as personally speak with members of the page who they felt were making ad hominem attacks on Simakov.

In a statement posted on Reddit on November 11, Simakov denounced the hypocrisy of the “No” event’s effort to steer away from personal attacks. “I find it interesting that the exact same people who last year were rabidly attacking me on everything from my financial status to my ethnicity all of a sudden feel that it’s now unacceptable to discuss the integrity of candidates running for positions of leadership,” said Simakov in the statement.

Simakov further expressed suspicion at the motives of the organizers, saying, “I’m starting to believe that [their] only desire is to just use authority, not to accomplish anything, but as an end in itself.”

“SSMU elections should not be a shitty episode of Jerry Springer,” Berry told The Daily. “The last three years have been loaded with shady campaign tactics, with personal attacks – not just by the candidates, but by their supporters, who should know better – and have become a personal mudslinging battle that benefits no one.”

“We also need to remember that as much as we disagree with his politics and his platform and his qualifications for the role, [Simakov also] deserves respect, personal space, and high levels of mental health,” said Berry.

The Daily’s Coordinating News editor Cem Ertekin was not involved in the interviews with Berry and Van der Ger, nor the writing and editing of this article, as he was involved in the unofficial vote “no” campaign.

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At the intersection of gender and Blackness in law

News

Black Law Students’ Association of McGill organizes panel discussion Clara Kyung News Writer

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n November 11, the Black Law Students’ Association of McGill (BLSAM) held a panel discussion titled “Black Women and the Law: Reclaiming Spaces and Changing the Narrative of Black Female Success.” The goal of the discussion was to shed light on the barriers that Black women face in the legal world.

The panelists included McGill law students Lillian Boctor, Samanthea Samuels, Stéphanie Déborah Jules, and Alyssa Clutterbock, and Université de Montréal law student Médigne Gourdet. The student panelists talked about their personal experiences and critical analyses regarding the intersection of Blackness and gender in the field of law.

Also present was Rachel Zellars, PhD candidate in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, whose research focuses on critical race theory.

Representation versus reality Samuels and Jules discussed the current media representation of Black women in the field of law, analysing three characters from popular TV shows: Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope in Scandal, Viola Davis as Annalise Keating in How to Get Away With Murder, and Gina Torres as Jessica Pearson in Suits.

Samuels and Jules acknowledged that such increased media presence of Black women in law is a positive change. Nevertheless, they said that the characters still enforce stereotypes, pointing to the hypersexualization of Olivia Pope and “angry Black woman” moments of Annalise Keating.

While Samuels and Jules praised Jessica Pearson as a strong, selfdetermined individual they lamented the fact that she remains a supporting character in the show.

This discussion of Black female characters in TV served as a launching pad for the real focus of the evening: the reality of Black women in the field of law.

According to Jules, “It’s important

The panelists, all except Rachel Zellars.

Courtesy of Samanthea Samuels

[...] to use that media presence to actually talk about, ‘okay, this is TV. In reality, what’s happening?’”

“We’re not seeing those roles in real life,” Samuels said.

The panel presented statistics on the underrepresentation of Black people, and specifically Black women, in the legal world.

For example, as of March 2013, only 286 of the 24,450 practicing lawyers and 72 of the 1,245 active law students in Quebec were Black.

Clutterbuck approached this underrepresentation from a more personal angle, being one of two Black women in her class and the only Black woman in her law firm.

“For a Black woman, law is far too often a barrier or a bludgeon, rather than any sort of bridge to justice.”

Lillian Boctor, law student Gendered violence against Black women Boctor addressed state violence against Black women. “For a Black woman, law is far too often a barrier or a bludgeon, rather than any sort of

bridge to justice,” Boctor explained, focusing on a number of injustices faced by Black women, citing examples of sexual assault by police.

Zellars talked about how Black women are characterized in legal circumstances, where they are portrayed as “self-deprecating agents, things to be shamed, exposed, and ultimately disbelieved in their allegations of sexual violence.”

Blackness in law school and professional life For Clutterbuck, the most difficult part about going through law school was attempting “to reconcile the fact that I have to write an exam [...] using concepts that were once used to oppress my ancestors.”

Gourdet described an interview where she was rejected and was told that she did not look like “the image of our cabinet.” She also explained the difficulties that Black women face in having few role models in the legal profession, and in coming to terms with the fact that hard work alone is not enough to succeed.

The panelists emphasized the importance of unapologetically claiming space as Black women pursuing careers in law and moving forward.

“It’s really easy for the status quo to keep producing predictable results, which is that every year, the overwhelming majority of future lawyers are white, from upper middle-class backgrounds. [...] In the spirit of wanting a bench across the country that is representative of the population, we need to continue to fight,” Clutterbuck said.

News

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Luis Solano speaks at McGill

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Canada complicit in criminalizing land defenders in Guatemala Anne-Cécile Favory The McGill Daily

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n November 12, the McGill Research Group Investigating Canadian Mining in Latin America (MICLA) hosted an event with Guatemalan journalist Luis Solano. The talk centred around the criminalization of land defenders in Guatemala, the role of the Canadian mining industry in the destruction of the land, the violation of human rights, and the persecution of environmental activists.

Sharing the stage with Solano were Pearl Eliadis, a human rights lawyer and member of the McGill Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism; Aniseto López, a Guatemalan activist; and Jennifer Moore, coordinator of the Latin America Program for MiningWatch Canada.

MICLA, in partnership with MiningWatch Canada, the Committee for Human Rights in Latin America, Voices-Voix, and many other organizations, held the event in the auditorium of the Otto Maass Chemistry building, where over

200 students and community members gathered.

Solano’s talk focused on the damage perpetrated by the Vancouver-based company Tahoe Resources Inc., and the complicity of the Canadian government, transnational corporations, and military contractors in the crisis taking place in southeastern Guatemala.

Solano said, “The Tahoe Resources project is not only a mining project but a part of a greater economic model in Guatemala, [...] repeating a pattern found across the world.”

Tahoe Resources Inc. acquired significant land concessions in Guatemala in 2010, when it bought the Escobal silver deposit from Goldcorp Inc., another Vancouverbased company. Solano said that the Escobal project was then undertaken without the consultation and consent of the local communities. In fact, according to Solano, many locals were unaware of the project or the nature thereof until a few years after its construction.

Since 2010, resistance and op-

position to the development and the continued operation of the mine have been met with repression, criminalization, and militarization, despite the peaceful nature of the protests.

“They detained people illegally.

They get the public ministry support to authorize these arrests, they create these lists of ‘troublemakers’ that they give to the military to arrest them,” said Solano. “It sows terror among people.”

To draw parallels between Guatemala and Canada with regards to governmental action against activism, Eliadis brought up the role of Canada’s anti-terrorism act Bill C-51, which can potentially criminalize environmental and Indigenous activism. As such, said Eliadis, mining companies can destroy the land and perpetrate gross violations of human rights with impunity.

According to the speakers, land defenders in Guatemala are criminalized and labelled as terrorists, and have been targeted by security contractors hired by Tahoe Re-

Luis Solano at McGill.

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily

sources Inc. and the Guatemalan military forces.

However, according to Solano, the problem is “not just military, it’s much more complex; it’s a spiderweb of counterinsurgency.”

Aidan Gilchrist-Blackwood, a U2 Political Science and History student and member of MICLA who attended the event, said in an interview with The Daily, “The crimi-

nalization of land defenders is an important human rights issue, but it gets very little coverage in the Canadian media. […] It’s having a major impact on Indigenous peoples both in Canada and around the world.”

Addressing students about the importance of collective action, Eliadis said, “We must assure that there is no impunity, that’s where you all come in.”

Underwhelming general assembly fails to meet quorum

Undergraduates discuss SSMU executive portfolio restructuring Cem Ertekin The McGill Daily

O

n November 9, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) held the Fall 2015 General Assembly (GA). The GA failed to meet the required quorum of 100 students, despite SSMU having arranged the event in the SSMU ballroom to accommodate around 200 students.

There were no motions on the agenda, however, President Kareem Ibrahim brought up a discussion item regarding the restructuring of SSMU executive portfolios.

Discussion on SSMU restructuring According to Ibrahim, SSMU is in dire need of restructuring. Ibrahim explained that over the past decade, SSMU’s activities have expanded exponentially, making the tasks of SSMU executives increasingly demanding. The exceptional circumstances caused by the resignation of SSMU General Manager Jennifer Varkonyi and VP Internal Lola Baraldi have only compounded the strain.

For instance, the VP External portfolio was recently expanded to include the promotion of a policy on accessible education and another policy on climate change. Additionally, the

VP University Affairs portfolio was expanded to include advocacy for mental health on campus.

“Not this year, but every year, what we see is executive burnout. [...]

Our contract actually stipulates seventy hours a week. I’ll leave it to you to decide, but on top of a part-time course load, that’s probably not the healthiest. We have dialogues about mental health [...] in the workplace and in our activities. [...] It seems that it’s dissonant for the executives to be asked to work seventy hours a week.”

Ibrahim explained that there are multiple restructuring proposals on the table, which include adding a seventh SSMU executive position and/or creating Associate VP positions.

Ibrahim asked the participants of the GA to voice their opinions multiple times, however, the participants remained mostly silent.

Arts Representative Becky Goldberg asked about the financial feasibility of creating a seventh full-time executive position, considering SSMU’s ongoing financial difficulties.

In response, VP Finance and Operations Zacheriah Houston said that it would be possible, though it would be “a question of priorities.”

“A lot of different things would need to be considered. In terms of how it would affect current executive

salaries, it’s unlikely that the executive salaries would be affected, because they already make, to be honest, about $5 to $6 an hour, if you divide the actual work they do by their salaries,” Houston said.

“I’m not confident saying that we could pay a [...] seventh full-time executive the salary we pay the executives now, without significant cuts that would affect other services,” Houston continued.

SSMU finances The five SSMU executives also made presentations about what their jobs really entail and their progress in the year so far.

Houston explained that most of his time is spent figuring out SSMU’s budget, the audited financial statements of which were supposed to be approved at the GA. The budget was presented, but as the GA did not meet quorum, the budget will be brought back for approval in Winter 2016.

According to the financial statements, SSMU ran a surplus of approximately $214,000 in the 201415 academic year. However, after accounting for expenditures in restricted budgets, SSMU actually ran a deficit of about $50,000.

Notably, the SSMU Services budget ran a surplus of $242,951 and the

Clubs budget ran a deficit of $100,988.

Regarding this, Houston said, “We just have no way of predicting what clubs are going to spend over the year, so we don’t budget for it. At the end of the year, we add up their expenses and revenues, and then we account for it in SSMU’s budget.”

Houston also reported on 4Floors, SSMU’s annual Halloween party held in the Shatner building, which was under-attended this year. While the numbers are not yet finalized, Houston believes that SSMU lost between $2,000 to $4,000 on the event.

“Not this year, but every year, what we see is executive burnout. [...] Our contract actually stipulates seventy hours a week.”

Kareem Ibrahim, SSMU President VP External Emily Boytinck, who took over the planning duties of

4Floors in the absence of a VP Internal, explained to The Daily that ticket sales were moved online this year, “but we realized that the line itself was a major form of promotion.”

Executive reports VP University Affairs Chloe Rourke announced that SSMU would be hiring its first ever Indigenous Affairs coordinator, “who will hopefully be spearheading [SSMU’s] reconciliation campaign in March.”

“And as well, [they’ll] be institutionalizing some Indigenous solidarity initiatives and the traditional territory acknowledgement.”

Boytinck talked about the two new provincial student federations that are currently being created in Quebec. She said that she would be consulting both SSMU Council and the student body in deciding between the Association pour la voix étudiante au Québec (AVEQ) and the Union étudiante du Québec (UEQ).

Speaking on the importance of provincial student federations, Boytinck said, “My job description [...] says: ‘Lobby the government.’

That is extremely hard to do as a single individual and so it’s really really helpful to join up with other student unions.”

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Post-grads to support Student Refugee Program fee

News

Council discusses Sexual Assault Policy, library renovation Saima Desai The McGill Daily

T

he Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) met on November 11, passing motions to allow for the resignation of the Internal Affairs Officer Sahil Kumar, to strike a bylaw allowing for Chief Justice special appointments, and to support a fee levy increase for World University Service of Canada (WUSC) McGill.

Principal Suzanne Fortier, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens, and Trenholme Dean of Libraries Colleen Cook were also present at Council, talking to the councillors about issues ranging from the drafting of the Sexual Assault Policy to the renovation of the McLennanRedpath library complex.

Changes on Council Sahil Kumar resigned his position as Internal Affairs Officer of PGSS in a motion passed by the council. Kumar took a leave of absence from October 5 to November 2, and his resignation will come into effect December 2.

Kumar did not disclose the reasons for his resignation.

The Council then approved dates for a by-election to fill the vacant position. The nomination period began on November 9 and will end on 22, with campaigning occurring from November 23 to 29, and the voting period spanning from November 30 to December 6.

Council also ratified the appointment of a new Speaker, Logan Smith. Smith will replace Nida Nizam, who has occupied the position since 2012.

Motion of support for WUSC levy Council heard from Sujay Neupane, a member of WUSC McGill. Neupane spoke in support of a consumer price index (CPI) adjustment to the WUSC levy to sponsor the group’s Student Refugee Program (SRP), which works to sponsor students from refugee camps pursuing their undergraduate degree at McGill.

The SRP started at McGill in 1986 with a referendum that passed a levy of $1 per academic year. However, since 1986, the fee

levy has not been adjusted according to CPI. To adjust for the error, the fee would need to be increased to $1.92 retroactively.

“Because there was no local committee at McGill in the nineties, all this money was being accumulated, and with the present levy [...] we’re able to sponsor two students every year right now,” Neupane said.

“Next year we’re going to sponsor four more students, for a total of six, and McGill is paying for the four students [...] for [that] one year. But after that, for 2017, again we’re going to go back to sponsoring two students. But we can no longer do that as of 2018, because the accumulated money is running out and a dollar levy is only enough to sponsor one student,” he added.

The adjusted fee constitutes a 92 per cent increase, and the University has asked WUSC to call a referendum on the matter.

According to Neupane, should the levy cease to exist, and should there be no committee in the future, “this program might just end. [....]

We want to make a statement to McGill admin [... that] ‘Look, PGSS supports us.’”

“We can no longer [continue the SRP] as of 2018, because the accumulated money is running out and a dollar levy is only enough to sponsor one student.”

Sujay Neupane, member of WUSC McGill Council voted to support the motion, as WUSC McGill is still negotiating terms with the University.

Sexual Assault Policy Principal and Vice-Chancellor

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily

Thomson House.

Suzanne Fortier was also present at Council, speaking with cautious optimism about the future of research funding under the new federal Liberal government, and stressing the importance of “curiosity-driven research and purposedriven research.”

During the question period, Fortier addressed queries regarding allegations of intimate relationships between professors and research assistants.

“We have to [...] be careful in respecting [professors’] private lives,” stated Fortier. She noted, “We must also ensure that people have higher standards of professional conduct.”

Fortier stated that dealing with such issues “is not taking a position on morality but on professionalism.”

Ollivier Dyens, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), told Council that Dean of Students André Costopoulos was working with the student-run Sexual Assault Policy Working Group (SAPWG) to create a policy, which would include studentprofessor relationships.

Dyens emphasized the importance of “giving to students the quick access to talk about these

things,” and making it easy for students to come forward with an allegation of assault without fear of jeopardizing their academic standing or opportunities.

Renovation of McLennan‌Redpath library complex Additionally, Council heard from Trenholme Dean of Libraries Colleen Cook about the proposed renovation of the McLennanRedpath library complex.

Cook spoke about a day-long survey conducted in November 2014, which found that “one out of every five students was in one of our libraries during this eight to ten hour period, and [... they] were there to work.” According to Cook, the vast majority of students used libraries for solo or group studying, while only a small fraction accessed physical texts.

The renovation plan proposes to build a three-story robotic storage facility underneath Lower Field, which would house McGill’s large collection of rare and special texts.

“What this does is allow us to free up those spaces that are currently occupied by stacks into [...] totally flexible user spaces,” Cook told Council.

“We have to [...] be careful in respecting [professors’] private lives. [...] We must also ensure that people have higher standards of professional conduct.”

Principal Suzanne Fortier The project, called “Fiat Lux” (Latin for “let there be light”), will integrate a large glass-enclosed seating area along the McLennanRedpath Terrace, preserving the stone walls of the original building.

The project will also renovate the facade of the library facing McTavish and provide a corridor within the renovated library for students to pass through from McTavish to Redpath Terrace.

— Is that the script for the new season of House of Cards?

— No, it’s just The McGill Daily’s news section news@mcgilldaily.com

Commentary

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The human cost of innovation On the role of technology in the American cotton boom

Nadir Khan Shadows of Slavery

I

n 1793, an invention by an unremarkable man who grew up on a quiet farm in Westborough, Massachusetts, remarkably changed the world of slavery. His name was Eli Whitney, and like many after him, he channelled a seemingly benign spirit of technological innovation that transformed, and worsened, the working conditions of enslaved peoples in the American South.

It was in the midst of the American slave economy’s 18th century shift from a central cash crop of tobacco to cotton that Whitney invented the cotton gin. This device rapidly separated the seeds from picked cotton, decreasing processing time by a factor of fifty and accelerating the highly labour intensive and slow process of planting, cultivating, and picking cotton.

Faster processing meant more cotton could be shipped, and with foreign demand rising, use of the cotton gin became widespread among planters. Cotton productionthereby increased exponentially, as did the demand for slave labour in the Lower Mississippi Valley. The impact was immense – the number of enslaved people would swell from 700,000 in 1790 to 4,000,000 by the dawn of the American Civil War in 1860. As slavery became even more firmly entrenched in the American South, the economic and political powerhouse of the “Cotton Kingdom” took root.

With Enlightenment ideas travelling across the world, Whitney was not alone in plucking what could be assumed to be the harmless fruits of human ingenuity. By 1811, engineer Robert Fulton had designed and launched the New Orleans steamboat – a vessel nev-

er before seen on the waters of the Mississippi. For the first time, steam-powered boats could go up, instead of just down, the crucial Mississippi river, which fed into New Orleans, a focal point of the transatlantic slave trade. Steamboats literally raced up and down the waterway, as historian Walter Johnson recounts in River of Dark Dreams, frantically transporting cotton from the Mississippi Valley to the bustling market in New Orleans. Upriver, the lands that were previously thought to be too far from the market suddenly became viable places to have plantations, as steamboats could now deliver agricultural goods.

The history of technology and slavery helps debunk the myth that innovation can be disentangled and disconnected from violence exacted upon oppressed people.

The American Empire was ascending as the unprecedented cotton boom rattled across the world by the 1830s, but different minds continued to devise ways that would make the Cotton Kingdom more efficient. After careful experimentation, a hybrid genetic strain of cotton named Petit Gulf was created. This strain of cotton hardened the already gruelling work regime

Marina Djurdjevic | Illustrator of enslaved people. According to Johnson, not only did Petit Gulf resist cotton rot and produce finer fibres, it also grew in a variety of climates and soils, bloomed earlier, which lengthened the picking season, and was easier to pick quickly, thereby almost quadrupling the daily workload of enslaved adults.

Today, we tend to think of technological innovation as a universal social good – rapid technological change is often touted as a great benefit of capitalism. The history of technology and slavery helps debunk the myth that innovation can be disentangled and disconnected from violence exacted upon oppressed people.

Recent technological development in the areas of transportation and communication have made it

possible to globalize production, displacing labourers and driving down wages.

Take, for example, Apple and Samsung’s ever-evolving consumer electronics, the unparalleled convenience of which is in such high demand that production can scarcely keep up. At the Foxconn factories in China that manufacture the companies’ products, people work 12 hours per day for weeks without rest, and do hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime. Exploitation of children is also rampant. These abhorrent working conditions have led to a wave of suicides in recent years, with workers jumping from the windows of the factories at the Foxconn City Industrial Park.

The trope of the pioneering captain of industry fearlessly driv-

ing society forward deeply pervades the modern consciousness.

But between glorifying the likes of E. I. du Pont, Steve Jobs, and Henry Ford, something important gets lost: the potentially brutal legacy and human impact of technological ideas like those exemplified by Whitney, Fulton, and others. We should remember, then, that for all that technology brings to the world, it comes at an unjustifiable cost to those most deeply oppressed by the capitalist system of production.

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@ mcgilldaily.com.

Letters

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Don’t politicize Remembrance Day There was something fundamentally wrong with last Monday’s feature about Remembrance Day (“What we remember,” November 9, Features, page 10). It is on this day that Canadians remember those who served, not in celebration, but in reverence.

It is a powerful moment at 11 o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month when Canadians stop for a moment of silence, to remember. I was truthfully shocked to see a fellow McGill student determinately attach as many political issues to Remembrance Day as possible. The author failed to understand

the day’s sole purpose: the commemoration of each and every one of the members of the armed forces who served Canada. It is not, as is suggested, exclusionary of ethnicity or gender. All are remembered.

Furthermore, militarism is not a part of Remembrance Day. It is not somehow innately supported through ceremonial salutes, military uniform, or the memorialization of fallen soldiers. This kind of false equivalency is not only intellectually dishonest, but morally deplorable.

Remembrance Day it is not about spread-

ing current-day political agendas as the author advocates. Nor is it about outlining the controversial motives of historical figures, racism of contemporary writers, or the lack of modern-day civil rights in the early 20th century. The mention of current political injustices and revisionist historical perspectives would completely dismantle Remembrance Day’s fundamental purpose. The day was created to remember the fallen, not spout the latest political agenda. These acts are disrespectful to the millions of Canadians who served in the armed forces. Claims that

Remembrance Day promotes the military-industrial complex, white supremacy, and imperialism are absolutely ridiculous. But more importantly, they are completely irrelevant to the purpose of Remembrance Day. This day is for them, not for any political movement – right or left. Please respect the armed forces, remember their sacrifices, and leave politics at home on Remembrance Day. —Coltin Lillico, U1 Political Science student

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Commentary

November 16, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Type 1 diabetes looks like me On the highs and lows of juggling first year and health

Ryan Jamula Commentary Writer

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You have diabetes.”

After being diagnosed five years ago, I was quickly introduced to the hectic world of insulin, finger pricking, and all the complexities of diabetes management. As a second-year student at McGill and a type 1 diabetic, I am celebrating National Diabetes Awareness Month with a commitment to shamelessly and unapologetically share my experience living with diabetes, in the spirit of this year’s theme, “T1D Looks Like Me.” My intention here is not to explain the science of diabetes, but rather to share the ways in which diabetes intersected with nearly every aspect of my first-year experience. I wish to encourage an open dialogue about the challenges and barriers faced by those with an often invisible disease: to all those living with type 1 diabetes, especially those who may be struggling, I want you to know that you are not alone.

The first year of university is supposed to be exciting, often portrayed as a major milestone in life. As I packed my bags and left my hometown of Brantford, Ontario, I was indeed extremely excited, but also somewhat nervous. I was also concerned with how living with type 1 diabetes would affect my university experience and lifestyle. How would my diabetes management routine be impacted by all the new things that were about to be thrown at me?

Would I be able to have the ‘typical’ college experience?

Many new students are introduced to university through Frosh. It’s no secret that Frosh is generally associated with a lot of partying and alcohol, and I won’t lie – the drinking culture associated with Frosh was intimidating to me. Excessive alcohol consumption and type 1 diabetes can be a treacherous, even deadly, mix. Although I drink alcohol, I must do so with caution. This means monitoring my blood sugar throughout the night and being prepared for the delayed effects that can cause very unpleasant (and sometimes dangerous) blood sugar lows.

The invisibility of diabetes often means that you have to advocate for yourself and your limits.

One of the nights during Frosh, I was carrying an unopened bottle of Gatorade with me in case my blood sugar dropped too low.

Upon entering a club, it was confiscated, and the bouncer didn’t seem to care when I tried to explain my situation – I was only

Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily able to get it back after speaking to a Frosh coordinator. While I did have fun at Frosh, my experience at the club illustrates how I feel about drinking culture in general: it can be stressful and overwhelming at times, and is the site of an internal struggle to constantly recognize my personal boundaries and ensure that they are respected.

With diabetes there is no vacation, no weekend off, or personal day to recharge.

Finding a semblance of balance in the busy life of university is challenging for any new student, but is especially important for good diabetes management.

Eating a balanced diet, getting enough sleep, checking your blood sugar throughout the day, and trying to fit in physical activity while maintaining some sort of regularity to your daily routine are all vital factors in doing it well. It’s a lot easier said than done, and it is especially difficult when you go through a period of transition where everything feels like it’s changing at once.

The chaos of this transition to university really impacted my control over my diabetes. Staying up late studying, going out, having class at different times every day, constantly adjusting insulin dos-

ages, changing my diet, and struggling squeeze in exercise and time to socialize made controlling my blood sugar extremely difficult.

There were days where I was practically ignoring my diabetes; at other times, I was trying really hard to be diligent, but still not getting the results I wanted. I was exhausted, not only by the demanding schedule of university, but also by the daily emotional and physical effort of managing my diabetes.

Shortly after hitting a rough patch in my first semester, I had my first endocrinology appointment since arriving in Montreal. My test result was not horrible, but as I had expected, my sugar levels had gone up over the three months I’d been at McGill. The doctor’s response was that it was normal for a diabetic student at university to go through periods of poorer control and that I should just keep trying to do better.

I was somewhat relieved by this response, but also felt a sense of great frustration. “Just keep trying” was not a satisfying answer. I was trying, but I felt in many ways that I was failing.

One of the most frustrating aspects of living with diabetes is feeling limited or socially isolated by the disease. I struggled throughout first year to balance pursuing a normal social life and taking good care of my health. I desperately wanted to just study, go for a run, or eat and drink whatever I felt like without having to take insulin, check my sugar levels, and weigh the consequences of every decision I made. I often felt guilty that

I was neglecting my health, but at the same time, when I tried to meticulously control every aspect of my diabetes, I felt like I was missing out. And at times I felt incredibly jealous – jealous that, from my perspective, everyone around me was carefree and having a good time while I was in the corner checking my blood sugar, gulping down juice to treat a low, or weighing the potential consequences of having one more drink.

There were times in my first year when, despite being surrounded by people, I felt alone, like there was nobody who could relate to what I was going through. I was experiencing diabetes burnout, and with diabetes there is no vacation, no weekend off, or personal day to recharge.

I learned in my first year that finding and accessing support resources is incredibly important.

While I was able stay in contact with the diabetic clinic in my hometown, which was extremely helpful, I also found it necessary to access resources on campus. By registering with the Office for Students with Disabilities, I was able to receive exam accommodations, allowing me to take breaks without losing exam time. While I’ve never actually used the stop time yet, it provides a huge sense of relief to know that the option is there if I need it.

Other important sources of support for me were the floor fellows in my residence. Being able to openly express how I was genuinely feeling in a non-judgmental

environment helped me deal with the complex emotions of a strenuous first year and improved my overall mental health. The diverse concerns and challenges I faced in terms of both my physical and mental wellbeing all in their own way impacted how I was able to manage my diabetes.

My intention in writing this article was not to dwell on negatives, but to be open and sincerely honest about my experiences. Living with diabetes has not stopped me, and will not stop me, from living a meaningful life. In fact, it motivates me to be healthy and to achieve my goals in spite of these challenges, and reminds me to be thankful for my amazing support network. My first year at university challenged me in many ways, but it was also the best year of my life.

Type 1 diabetes looks like testing your blood sugar more than ten times a day. It looks like the fear of serious future health complications from highs and it looks like panic, disorientation, and fatigue caused by dangerous lows. It looks like exhaustion, sleeping through classes, and moments of defeat. But it also looks like determination, success, motivation, and inspiration. It looks like groundbreaking medical advancements and incredible support networks. It looks like courage and hope.

My name is Ryan Jamula and type 1 diabetes looks like me.

Ryan Jamula is a U1 Political Science student. To contact him, email ryan_jamula@hotmail.com.

Commentary

November 16, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Who is the “typical college experience” for?

Molson Hall was an alienating show of whiteness and masculinity Paniz Khosroshahy The McGill Daily

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n the summer of 2013, I was very excited to come to McGill after the trauma that was going to school in a small, ultra-racist town in rural British Columbia. However, over the last two years, I have come to realize that white supremacy is not a problem that Montreal solves just by virtue of being an urban centre. While I have succeeded in finding the amazing communities I hoped for when I left home, rez was not where this happened. I was placed, unfortunately, in Molson Hall, and the experience proved to be a simple repetition of high school with the same social dynamics and microaggressions, only working more subtly. I may have lived in Molson, but I never belonged there.

Molson is a self-fulfilling prophecy: people choose it because of its reputation for partying, and the partying reputation exists because of the people that choose it. The Unofficial McGill Guide knows this, students know this, floor fellows know this, even the McGill administration knows this. But I didn’t until I arrived on campus. It seemed like most of the students in Molson were people who were popular in a few Toronto high schools; within the first few days, judgements had been made and cliques had been formed. Since I didn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or have casual sex, I was again a “loser,” back at the bottom of the social hierarchy where I had been throughout high school.

I was in for a rough year. In the evenings, I detested going back to rez as people would be outside – smoking, staring, judging. On weekends, I felt uncomfortable leaving my room to use the bathroom, since I was in my pyjamas and everyone else was pre-drinking in the hallways. I remember one of my only friends in rez telling me, “Maybe there is something wrong with us, not them.”

To be clear, nothing is wrong with people’s decisions to smoke, drink, or have sex. What’s wrong is the power wielded to those who engage in these behaviours over those who don’t, hierarchies created based on partaking in these behaviours and the exclusion of those who choose not to. I didn’t go to a single party in Molson, and it’s not because I never wanted to or wasn’t at least curious, it was because I knew I would be unwelcome – the alcohol, the bro culture, and the whiteness would just be overwhelming.

White people, statistically, are the largest consumers of alcohol.

Molson Hall.

Growing up, my family didn’t consume alcohol, and before I came to McGill, I didn’t know the difference between vodka and whiskey.

In Molson, drinking was the only form of fun, and reducing the risk associated with drinking and other risky behaviours seemed to be the floor fellows’ only priority. This was alienating. I don’t mean to say this to take away from the incredible work that floor fellows do every day in residences to make residence life safer, and my floor fellow was incredibly supportive of my “antiMolsonian” decisions. Looking after students, whether they partake in risky behaviours or not, is an incredibly important component of floor fellows’ values of harm reduction, and I firmly stand behind them in their ongoing fight for a fair collective agreement.

However, it does seem like the residence system imagines a certain type of student, and this prototype is white and “bro-y,” drinks, smokes, and has a lot of sex. While it is important to reduce the risk associated with potentially risky behaviour, and the classic “use a condom” or “drink water” advice is pertinent for many, it is equally important to create an environment where people can feel safe and at home even if choosing not to engage in those behaviours.

Furthermore, while promoting non-judgement and trust within residences is crucial, it is also important to note that choices made in rez are not made in a vacuum, but in an environment stifled by the pressure of performing the social script of “Canadian college life.”

Drinking and having sex, then, is not only about making one’s own choices, since they occur in a con-

Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily text where everybody is desperately trying to fit in and create a home away from home. A friend of mine from Molson, for example, tried hard to be a true “Molsonian” in her first semester – she drank, she partied, she hooked up. Come second semester, she gave up because “it was too fake, it wasn’t me.”

Double standards of sexual activity do not offer women the same benefits offered to men when it comes to sex.

There need to be more resources in residences for students who don’t fit in or feel comfortable with the rez party culture – the absence of this support centres certain students over others and further alienates the rest. The residence system – the students who fill it, the floor fellows who lead it, the administration that runs it, and the alumni who pass on its culture – is complicit in perpetuating these dynamics by uncritically accepting the centrality of certain behaviours to the residence experience.

Much has been written in recent years about the so-called “hookup culture” on university campuses. In Molson, it was assumed that you were fucking, because, well, that’s what people do in college. Potential sexual partners were only a few rooms away, parents were hundreds of kilometres away, and everyone had a single

room. Overall, the message that I got my first year was a confirmation of what Hollywood had told me earlier: if I wasn’t hooking up, I was missing out on an important part of the college experience. Not everyone, however, gets to participate in and benefit from hookup culture to the same degree. Generally, hookup culture offers the most benefit to white, cis, heterosexual, able-bodied men, and there was an endless supply of them in Molson.

Double standards of sexual activity do not offer women the same benefits offered to men when it comes to sex. While bros “score,” women can’t sleep with too many people, otherwise they’re sluts. Our idea of sex is centred around male pleasure; statistically, women are widely dissatisfied with their casual sexual experiences. Furthermore, only certain types of sex for certain bodies constitutes the rez-approved definition of scoring, because the heteronormative residence hookup culture completely erases queer experiences. Queer men cannot be part of bro culture because, well, they’re gay. Queer women are fetishized by the straight male gaze, and other people with queer identities are simply erased. In a system where social status is awarded to men who have sex with the most women and women who have sex with the ‘right’ number of men, nothing else counts.

Finally, rez is very white. Racialized women are not only subject to the virgin/whore dichotomy with respect to their number of sexual partners; we are also subject to power dynamics related to our ethnicity or religion. In Molson, a white man really wanted to sleep with me because I was

Iranian – and therefore Muslim, because all Iranians are Muslims, right? – and since Iranians/Muslims “don’t sleep around,” my racialized sexuality made me ‘hard to get’ and banging me would present him with a bigger bragging right.

On the other side of the spectrum, a Black friend from another residence told me that she was having difficulty navigating her sexuality in a culture filled with images and stereotypes of hypersexualized Black women. I firmly believe that floor fellows can be empowered to solve this problem. Much would be improved if racialized floor fellows were given more support, and students of colour were given space by the residence administration to address racism in rez.

The bros that I’m talking about will dismiss this commentary as “just another Daily article,” and that is exactly what male entitlement and white fragility looks like. The white man can walk into rez wasted at 3 a.m. and yell in the hallways, puke in every sink in the communal bathroom, leave the toilet unflushed, throw thumbtacks on floors, urinate in the elevator, or hide all the toilet paper in the bathtub, walk into other people’s rooms naked with no consequence – and yes, all of these have happened. Too male, too white, too straight to worry about the implications of his actions in a broader context, because, well, there aren’t any (for him). My first year in rez was just this, an extension of high school, a 24/7 live show of toxic white masculinity.

Paniz Khosroshahy is a U2 Women’s Studies and Computer Science student. To reach her, email paniz.ksy@gmail.com.

Sci+Tech

November 16, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

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“No, I’m not on my period!”

The controversial science behind menstrual mood swings Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez Mind the Complexities

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bout once per month, people with uteruses across the globe experience menstruation, which can have startling effects on the way we think and feel. The Mayo Clinic notes that symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) include mood swings, irritability, and depression. Those who have experienced menstruation often feel confused when reacting to situations differently from how they normally do. It is estimated that for 3 to 9 per cent of the female population, the symptoms of PMS become severe enough to interfere with work, school, social activities, or relationships, causing functional impairment and harm to one’s mental health. The severe form of PMS is called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and it is classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). For people who experience PMDD, PMS symptoms stop being just a monthly inconvenience and become a real burden.

But how is it that normal reproductive function can have a consequence on mental health? Is there a clear mechanism that explains how hormones may impact nervous system functioning? Or is it more a question of a biased interpretation of normal bodily processes, the bias arising from physical discomfort and reinforced by the negative view society has on menstruation?

Do PMS and menstruation really affect our brains?

One widely held hypothesis focuses on possible effects of hormones on the nervous system, though it is not very well supported. This hypothesis suggests that severe PMS may be the result of altered activity or sensitivity of certain neurotransmitter systems, caused by changes in steroid hormone concentration.

Evidence cited by proponents of this hypothesis comes from mood changes related to pregnancy, delivery, menopause, and other physiological states in which hormones are shifting dramatically.

Postpartum depression and the increased onset of anxiety disorders after menopause would act as examples of hormonal changes that have negative consequences for mental health.

There are issues with this hypothesis, however. We know that brain activity generates and directs the production of all hormones through the neuroendocrine system. This interaction between the nervous system – the

brain – and the endocrine system involves different hormonesecreting glands in our bodies.

However, this does not explain in any way how the balance between steroid hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone can affect neurotransmitter function.

So far, there is no evidence of clear molecular or cellular mechanisms to explain a hormonal influence on neurotransmission, nor a clear model of which hormonal profile contributes the most to positive or negative moods.

Scientists that side with the biological susceptibility hypothesis also claim that it is open to non-biological factors, explaining that the neuroendocrine process related to female reproduction is also vulnerable to changes in psychosocial, environmental, and physiological spheres. But the question remains: why are only female reproductive hormones – and not any of the other axes of the endocrine system – causing these impacts on emotional states?

The bias in our approach to PMS and menstruation To assess the strength of scientific evidence in support of a well-defined PMS, researchers at the University of Toronto conducted a literature review in 2012 that examined more than 47 scientific studies on the daily reported moods in people who do not look for medical assistance to solve their period-related issues.

Surprisingly, the majority of subjects did not regularly experience premenstrual negative moods.

Adding to a previous study done by the same group in the same year that failed to find a clear relation between mood and specific hormone concentrations in saliva, blood, and urine, it may well be that the evidence we used to define the existence of mental health disturbances in PMS as a universal phenomenon could have been biased to begin with.

There are several factors that may have lead to bias in studies related to mental health and PMS. First, most of the information gathered about the syndrome comes from those who seek help and do not represent the general population of people who have periods. Also, the more than sixty instruments used to gather information on subject’s moods during the menstrual cycle ask mainly about experiences such as depression, anxiety, and irritability, placing much more emphasis on the negative experiences and thus limiting a complete description of premenstrual mood experiences.

Interestingly, in 1994, a research group led by Joan Chrisler at Connecticut College created the Menstrual Joy

Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily Questionnaire (MJQ) to study how positive moods varied with the menstrual cycle in an attempt to shift the focus from negative phenomena only. Among the forty participants that responded to the questionnaire, around 75 per cent reacted with incredulity, surprise, or thought that the title was ironic – as if, to them, it was impossible to find joy in such a thing.

There are several factors that may have lead to bias in studies related to mental health and PMS. An interesting point to discuss is the definition that Antonio Damasio, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, gives for emotions. He explains that feelings arise from a conscious interpretation of purely physical signals of the body reacting to external and internal stimuli. In this case, negative emotions during both PMS and menstruation could arise from the physical discomfort caused by symptoms like bloating, water retention, breast tenderness, and menstrual cramps. To this is added the fact that menstruation is generally looked at in society as

negative, even disgusting.

Overall, we find that the evidence for the biological susceptibility hypothesis is not convincing enough to explain a consistent change in neurotransmitters that repeats itself period after period, nor to believe that women’s negative mental states are largely determined by their hormones.

However, whether it’s in the media, in the way we talk to each other, or in the way parents teach their children about menstruation, we as a society keep reinforcing this idea by associating the anger or sadness experienced during the menstrual period with hormones, or assuming women’s judgement may be blurred by PMS. Studies on those who do not have PMDD don’t show any consistent patterns of dysfunction due to negative premenstrual moods. So, with 75 per cent of the female population experiencing PMS, and without any evidence of an aberrant function of the hormonal system, should we keep thinking of it as a syndrome or disease? Or, is the idea that it is a well-established disorder misleadingly reinforcing our negative perception of normal body processes? It is true that, for those with PMDD, the symptoms associated with the last phase of the cycle may be a cause of distress and may require medical attention. When people do experience mental and physical health issues as a result of PMDD, it is important we take this seriously, and not

write it off as, “Oh, it’s just because of your period, suck it up.” But, among those who have periods and do not suffer from PMDD, menstruation need not continue to be seen as a negative phenomenon that could lead to neurological impairment, such as irrational emotionality, as the science simply does not support this.

We cannot deny the highly negative images of menstrual function that still prevail, or the negative side effects of this experience. I have personally experienced discomfort and mood changes at the onset of my period on many occasions. However, given the evidence, I realize the source of these experiences may not be as clear or well-defined as I thought it was. As a society, we should consider changing the way we view the normal female reproductive function, dropping the misleading notion that it is a “risk factor” for instability, anxiety, depression, and lack of mental control. This may not only help people endure their mood changes during their cycle as something normal, but may be the first step toward avoiding the long prevailing negative image of female sexual physiology.

Mind the Complexities is a column exploring how scientific knowledge can be applied to the various problems with mental health experienced in our society. Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez can be reached at mindthecomplexities@mcgilldaily.com.

2 Welcome to The Daily’s special issue on queerness and sexuality. Our goal in producing this issue was to incite discussion and create space for topics related to queerness and sexuality that are marginalized or less visible in mainstream media. The articles in this issue by no means exhaust the ways to approach the topic; our purpose was not, in any way, to define queerness or police sexualities. We are not trying to present a specific vision of queerness and sexuality, but to explore both from as many perspectives as possible – particularly those that are not often centred in media coverage. That said, the issue is still lacking in discussions of how queerness intersects with other identities, and there are still voices missing from it. As such, we welcome feedback and criticism.

We chose to use the word “queer” because it has come to be seen as an inclusive term that can encompass many identities and sexualities. Queer is also a political word, given that it was reclaimed by queer communities in the 1990s, who transformed it from a slur into an empowering identity. Queer implies difference, and in this issue we seek to address the many different experiences of queerness, to refrain as much as possible from homogenizing and conflating queer experiences and identities.

We also recognize that many non-straight folks do not identify with “queer” as a label, and we have chosen to make “queerness and sexuality” the topic of our special issue so as not to exclude those people. In using the word “sexuality” in our title, we hope to open up the issue to the complexities of sexuality that might be excluded from conceptions of queerness.

In putting together this issue, we wanted to be as accessible, transparent, and accountable to our readers as possible.

As such, McGill students outside of The Daily’s editorial board were invited to sit on the special issue committee and be part of the planning process. We also had two brainstorming sessions for the issue which were open to the public, as well as one session that was only for non-straight folks, in order to come up with ideas for the issue. In accordance with this goal of accessibility and accountability, we invite our readers to provide their feedback on the issue – if you have any comments, concerns, or questions, feel free to send them to community@mcgilldaily.com.

—The McGill Daily editorial board and special issue committee

Find more special issue content at mcgilldaily.com/queernessandsexuality

Glossary This glossary is included as a resource. We recognize that it is limited in scope, in particular to Western terms. These definitions are mutable and vary between individuals – people may use different identifiers for themselves, or identify with a term for different reasons. We urge readers to ask and apply the language an individual uses to describe themselves. You can learn more and find more resources at organizations like the Union for Gender Empowerment. aromanticism A lack of romantic attraction. asexuality A lack of sexual attraction. The term is sometimes used as an umbrella term for a variety of asexual identities, such as greysexual and demisexual, as well as for aromanticism. bisexual Traditionally defined as someone who experiences attraction to men and women, but is also used today to describe people who experience attraction to two or more genders. cis person Someone who presents as, lives as, and identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth. cissexism The system that perpetuates the idea that cis people are the ‘norm,’ and that a person’s assigned-at-birth gender is always their ‘real’ gender. It includes the belief that people who are not cis are less valid, less valuable, or lying. Saying that a trans woman is “really a man” is an example of cissexism. demisexual A person who experiences sexual attraction only after having formed a strong personal bond. gender The social construction of concepts like femininity and masculinity, which includes gender designation at birth, gendered expectations and perceptions, and identity. It differs across cultures, communities, and times. A person’s gender is self-defined, may be fluid, and is independent of birth assignation, sexual characteristics, and romantic and sexual orientation. genderfluid A gender that is not fixed and may shift over time through or between different identities. greysexual A person who rarely experiences sexual attraction. This identity is located on a spectrum between asexuality and sexuality. heteronormativity The system that perpetuates the idea that there is a specific ‘normal’ relationship between gender, sex, and sexuality; that this relationship always or usually manifests itself in individuals via cisgender identity, normative gender expression, and heterosexuality; and that it is essential to the proper functioning of society. Heteronormativity makes the false assumption that everyone is either heterosexual or ‘abnormal.’

intersex A general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that differs from the hegemonic definitions of female and male, as provided by the medical community and perpetuated in society at large. non-binary A gender other than man or woman. This can mean an identity between man and woman, a mix of the two, or one completely separate from both.

A non-binary person may or may not identify as trans. pansexual A person who experiences sexual attraction to people regardless of their gender.

QPOC, QTPOC Queer person of colour, queer trans person of colour. queer An explicitly political term that was re-appropriated in the 1990s in order to combat violence against non-normative people. It is self-identified, meaning that only those who describe themselves as queer are queer.

Although typically understood to mean individuals who experience nonheterosexual attraction (either in addition to or instead of heterosexual attraction), the term can be used to describe a variety of sexual experiences and preferences, such as pansexuality, asexuality, aromanticism, et cetera. However, someone who belongs to one of these categories will not necessarily identify as queer. Though many people of colour do identify as queer, the use of the term is often criticized for whitewashing the experiences of people of colour and excluding them. sex A medical term designating a certain combination of gonads, chromosomes, external sex organs, secondary sex characteristics, and hormonal balance. Sex is often simplified into categories of male and female, and sometimes intersex. These are arbitrary, socially constructed categories; for example, two people identified by the medical community as female could still have drastically different hormone levels. trans person Someone who presents as, lives as, and/or identifies with one or more genders other than the one they were assigned at birth.

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A space for asexuality Discarding constructs in search of queer solidarity Written by Anonymice This article is not intended to be a 101 introduction to asexuality, and assumes some level of background knowledge. The “I” is used to reflect the opinion/experience of one or both authors when addressing (a)sexuality, queerness, gender, and other Western social constructs.

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feel removed from a general population that seems to categorize sexuality as, above all else, a natural identity. I find this categorization dangerous, and especially isolating to those of us who fall into a fluctuating continuum of demisexual, graysexual, and asexual identities.

Common discourse defines an asexual person as someone who does not experience sexual attraction, in opposition to those who do. Naturalizing the desire for sex, i.e. categorizing sexuality as inherent within us, as an identity not influenced by experience, or as something static, prevents many from realizing or addressing (a)‌sexuality as something intrinsically mutable. The normalization of sex as a presupposed cornerstone of sexuality implies as well that one’s attractions, either sexual or romantic, correlate directly with one’s (a)sexual life, which is often untrue and serves only to negate a diverse range of personal experiences. And thus, it is impossible to equate any sexual act with any sexual identity.

It is essential that asexual communities and their allies foster spaces that decentralize sexual lives, and debunk sex and sexual desire as crucial to selfhood.

Through the normalization of sex and sexual desire, asexuality becomes abnormal, presented as external to sexuality. Simultaneously, though, designating it as a sexuality maintains it as a subgroup within the larger category. There exists a tension between asexuality as an alternative to sexuality and asexuality as included within the concept of sexuality, partially due to the linguistic morphology of the terms – sexual and asexual, the “a” working as an inherently othering force.

The many varying definitions of asexuality that people offer and abide by amplify this tension. I find that plurality beneficial, because any one definition seems to prove insufficient and confining. As such, it often feels to me like there is no appropriate way

Saima Desai and Jennifer Guan | Illustrators to integrate asexuality into a definition of sexuality. This relates back to the fact that sexuality itself depends on static notions of gender and biological sex. If we recognize both gender and biological sex as unreal, undefinable, uncategorizable, and unreliable identifiers, we can also realize the similarly constructed and imposing nature of sexuality.

Partly due to its categorization as “nonsexual” in nature or as an alternative to sexuality, asexuality has been historically excluded from the queer community. For instance, on a spectrum of sexual queerness, where do heteroromantic asexual folks find themselves? How do sexual and romantic attractions intersect, and what relationships do these identifiers maintain toward queerness? I would argue that these questions can only be resolved on a personal or individual basis, but that they do draw attention, on a larger scale, to the ways in which queerness most often involves sexual life as a criteria for inclusion.

As such, asexuality is chronically underrepresented, and, when discussed, it is conceptualized largely in terms of negation, or in terms of lack, often disregarding its emancipatory and healing potential.

Asexuality can be framed as positive in the sense that it may offer a way for some of us to negotiate past and current trauma.

While many asexual folks do not locate their identity in trauma, for the folks who do, an acceptance of asexuality becomes liberating. As such, it is essential that asexual communities and their allies foster spaces that decentralize sexual lives, and debunk sex and sexual desire as crucial to selfhood.

Indeed, reflecting on the consequences of the social constructs of gender and sexuality and mainstream discourses

around these topics, we should consider how they shape us. We should emphasize the fact that, in order to move toward emancipation and well-being, we need to provide our many communities with safer spaces to heal. Oftentimes, the best spaces for healing aren’t bars or parties with alcohol; as queer social gatherings mostly revolve around such places and events, they de facto exclude some of us.

Other queer spaces such as workshops and group discussions can be emotionally draining and fail to fulfill a need for friendship and community belonging. In creating spaces, I think we first need to observe the dynamics that exist in these scenes so as to take action toward achieving true inclusivity and solidarity.

Decentralizing sex within the queer community will welcome a broader range of folks and facilitate the creation of safer spaces. Moreover, while sexuality itself is limiting as a social construct, I acknowledge that it is often not possible to reject an entire conceptual framework. Finding ways to represent and verbalize our identities within this framework can be empowering and often necessary for those who are perpetually excluded from mainstream discourses.

We, as grassroots communities, must rework the prescribed definitions of (a) sexuality to acknowledge its inherent mutability over time and space, as well as its emancipatory and healing power. Asexuality must be validated and normalized, especially in queer spaces, but we cannot forget to question the social constructs that overarchingly constitute and bind identity. Indeed, if we hope to liberate ourselves from a (cis)sexist (hetero)patriarchal system, we must break the constraints of identity.

4

Bisexuality: on erasure and fetishization Wow! I can get sexual too (without you) Written by Rhiana Warawa You should be able to own your sexuality without fear of being told it’s a phase, or that you’re just trying to gain attention from cishet white men. I often feel like my sexuality has been taken from me in that I’m both erased and fetishized for it. My identity is treated as a joke, something that I will grow out of. Through this fetishization, men are able to exert sexual control over bisexual women, which contributes to the larger sexual oppression of women.

Far too many times I’ve been delegitimized by men I’ve been with who ask me invasive questions about my having slept with women: “Were they as good as me?” Well,

they were better, but that’s not the answer you were looking for, was it?

It feels so trivializing when bisexuality is assumed to be nothing more than a performance for someone else. My sexuality is not for your consumption. I’m not here to amuse your fantasies.

When I’m with a man, my interest in women is not taken seriously. When I’m with a woman, or tell someone that I am bisexual, I’m sexualized by men who assume that my attraction to women has something to do with them. I’m forced to justify my attraction, when I really don’t owe that to anyone – not even the people I’m sleeping with.

The personal attacks on my sexuality don’t stop with the men I’m sexually involved with – strangers at parties and even my supervisor at work

have asked me degrading questions about sex and threesomes in regards to my sexuality. There is no end to their ridiculousness. What is it like to feel so entitled? Is nothing off limits to straight men? So much of how women conduct themselves – appearance, behaviours – are assumed to be catered to men. They are interpreted though the male gaze, which Everyday Feminism defines as “the lens through which mostly white, heterosexual men are viewing the world; [it] is a lens of entitlement. It’s entitlement [...] to exploit [women’s] bodies without consequence.”

The male gaze fetishizes the experiences of queer women. For example, consider the common trope of drunk girls making out for the sake of male enjoyment. The problem with this narrative is that society

My sexuality is not for your consumption. I’m not here to amuse your fantasies.

Our sexualities are constantly being mediated through social systems that cater specifically to straight cis white men. Men see bisexual women as more sexually available to them than straight women or lesbians because they can project fantasies of promiscuity and performance upon them. From the political to the medical, to misogynist media and the horrific reality of rape culture, men use various tactics to control women and their bodies. These efforts to control women are doomed to fail, and with this failure comes the outward hostility that forms when oppressive fantasies are called out and shattered.

Maybe that’s why men choose to fetishize bisexual women… but mostly they just come across as gross and disrespectful.

experimentation, sloppy hook-ups, and “girls just wanna have fun.” Bisexual girls aren’t the kind of girls you bring home to your parents. Bisexual girls are the ones you fool around with on the side, have a good time with, and ultimately dispose of, precisely due to the nature of this fantasized bisexual girl.

Her perceived traits of exhibitionism, experimentality, and excitement are in stark contrast to the well-mannered and proper girl with whom you’re going to settle down. A bisexual girl is easy, but being committed to her is not.

Now put the two together. How are bisexual Asian women commonly perceived? Asian women – meek, mild-mannered, possessing all the traits of the Girl You Bring Home. Bisexual women – wild, deviant, promiscuous, the Girl You Love But Just Won’t Keep.

While an Asian man’s mannerisms are deemed incompatible with the ‘attractive’ trait of alpha male assertiveness, this same tension does not apply to the Bisexual Asian Woman. Instead, she becomes the best kind of vixen: the secret harlot, the presentable woman on the streets, but an insatiable beast in the sheets. And, to top it off, the Asian traits of complacency kick in in bed – not only does she love sex, she loves pleasing you. She gets off on getting you off. Isn’t that the dream?

And therein lies the problem: this is just a dream. This is a dream because bisexual Asian women aren’t placed on this earth to fulfill your fantasies. (Pro tip: Nobody is placed on this earth to fulfill anybody’s fantasies.) Of course there’s nothing wrong with people

who are, in fact, privately far more promiscuous than their public image. But problems arise when a person’s worth becomes reduced to a projected fantasy.

I am a person, first and foremost, and the meaning of my race or my sexuality or any aspect of my identity is for me only. I identify as something because I feel a certain way, not because I want to please anybody else.

History is working against us – years of colonialism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity rear their ugly heads for the marginalization of, essentially, those who aren’t straight, cis-male, and white. Very slowly but surely, representation of people who aren’t straight or gay is appearing. Famous people who have made open statements on being bisexual include Sapphire, Anna Paquin, and Michael Chabon. In popular fictional media, characters attracted to more than one gender include Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Brittany from Glee, and Frank Underwood from House of Cards, to name just a few.

Progress is coming, but it’s not just about more representation. The inclusion of Asians, bisexuals, and Asian bisexuals in mainstream media can help dismantle the harmful stereotypes and fetishization pervasive in society.

Representation should be diverse and faithful, showing that bisexual people do exist and are people just like everybody else. And, of course, not just white bisexuality – bisexual people of colour are out there, and it’s time they are given the space they deserve.

automatically assumes these girls are straight. But why does it matter? Why do they need to justify making out?

Further, the assumption of heterosexuality speaks to the injustice that is heteronormativity – maybe the only outlet these girls have to express their interest in other girls is through being drunk. Fluidity is a hard thing to discover about yourself. Sometimes bi women continue to hide their identities in drunken moments like these because it’s the only mildly acceptable (though fetishized) way of expressing themselves under the constraints of a heteronormative society.

Invisible dreams: the intersections of fetishization Written by Ki-eun Peck Author’s note: I actually identify as pansexual, but I use the term “bisexual” as it is more familiar and pervasive throughout society.

My name is Ki-eun Peck. So right off the bat, most people can tell that I’m of Asian heritage. What they can’t see immediately is that my sexual attraction is not restricted to men. My attraction is not concerned with gender at all – whether you identify as a man, a woman, or an identity outside of the gender binary, if I think you’re hot, I think you’re hot. Sexual orientation is intrinsically personal; no one has the right to dictate another person’s sexuality. Simple, right?

Now imagine this: I meet some guy at a party. He tells me he’s straight.

I then ask him: Are you sure you’re straight? How do you know? I don’t think straight people exist. I know you just told me you’re straight, and you’re standing right in front of me, but I don’t think straight people exist.

I’m being facetious. This kind of scenario would never happen, primarily because we live in a culture of heteronormativity, where straight is the assumed and privileged social norm.

Yet if the subject of sexuality arises, or someone asks about my orientation, or I feel I’m in a situation where I want to share my orientation, that ridiculous scenario at the party suddenly becomes real: “I don’t think bisexuality exists.

Are you sure you’re bisexual?”

A lot of people think I’m just con-

fused: “You’re either straight, or you’re a lesbian. Maybe you’re a lesbian, and you’re just saying you’re bisexual as a transition.” It’s astounding that something so inherently personal as sexuality can be subjected to external aggression and such inappropriate invasion on a regular basis.

Being bisexual and Asian in Western society is kind of like being Schrodinger’s cat. I exist – and at the same time, I don’t. There is a severe lack of representation for Asians in mainstream media (not to mention Asian bisexuals), and when there is representation, it’s for the purposes of fetishization, appropriation, and commodification. This lack of accurate representation contributes to the dismissal and questioning of my sexual identity.

There is a perception that Asians should be quiet, demure, and guarded.

They’re welcome to immigrate here to North America as long as they continue to quietly contribute to the economy and gracefully embrace assimilation. Now, throw gender norms into the mix. Stereotypes of Asianness have lead to the desexualization of Asian men in Western society. There seems to be irresolvable contradictions between what being Asian and what being an attractive man entails. If the attractive man is dominant, aggressive, and assertive, where does that leave the Asian man, who is assumed to be demure, socially awkward, and nonsexual? Asian women, on the other hand, are subject to hypersexualization. The well-behaving, well-mannered, obedient traits associated with

the Asian race easily become subject to fetishization, frequently at the hands of straight cis white men.

Bisexuality, too, exists in the seemingly irreconcilable state of hyperfetishization and invisibility. Mass media is dominated by straight representation, with token gay representation (normally a cis white man) – but any other orientation, including bisexuality, is scarce. A frantic need for binaries is dangerously pervasive throughout Western society and representations of people within it, from the gender binary (man or woman) to sexual orientation (gay or straight). Binaries allow for categories, for the placement of complex ideas into neat little boxes with hard labels. However, both gender and sexuality are too fluid to be universally categorized. Attempts to do so are not only futile, but also harmful for those who identify outside of specific boxes.

The [Bisexual Asian Woman] becomes the best kind of vixen: the secret harlot, the presentable woman on the streets, but an insatiable beast in the sheets.

Then there’s the hypersexualization and fetishization of bisexuality, to which I can personally attest. Bisexual girls, according to the dominant societal narrative, live in the realm of college

5 Erasing the idea of ‘passing privilege’: bisexual invisibility is not a superpower Written by Virginia Shram “At least you can pass as straight,” most bisexuals have heard at least once from a monosexual (someone who is only attracted to one gender) friend or partner.

As if “passing” as straight in lieu of having a respected identity were a benefit; as if my queerness must always be visible and open to critique, and the absence of stark visibility is an assumed rejection of identity.

Translation: “At least you can be grateful for being erased.”

‘Passing privilege’ is not a privilege, because it necessitates erasure of identity, one of the core oppressions against which queer individuals fight. The gift of being able to “pass” as straight and avoid homophobia only leads to vitriolic biphobia and enforces performativity. The requirement that bisexuals must look and act queer to be queer prevents bisexuals from accessing and participating in safer queer spaces. Bisexuality for women, says the queer community, must be represented by active lesbianness, and nothing less.

“Well, she’s 99 per cent into women, even though she’s married to a man, so she’s mostly queer,” I was once told. This characterization of attraction as quantitative confused me. How I could splice attraction and action into percentages? Am I more deserving of claiming “queerness”

[Biphobia] ignores intersectionality, thus tokenizing the lived experience of bisexuality as a simple stack of homosexual and heterosexual experiences instead of highlighting the multifaceted reality where attraction to two or more genders is experienced individually. the more women I sleep with? Do I count my partners and divide by the total? Should I minimize my experiences with men by stating, “Even though I’ve been with guys…”? Must I constantly expose what some see as my inner ‘lesbianness’ but combat it with a healthy dose of heterosexual lust? Moreover, how in hell does this constant self-restriction of sexual expression, this repetitive yelling at the heavy closed doors of queer events (“Yes, I’m with a man, but I am queer! Please let me in!”) not count as oppression? If ‘passing privilege’ means that I am blessed with having the world ignore my identity whilst I am plagued with defending my every sexual preference, then we have the wrong definition of privilege indeed.

Bi erasure and reductive performativity stem in part from the LGBTQ community’s attempts to homogenize itself. It’s easier for the queer community as a whole to gain respectability and social equity if its progress is easily identifiable. A gay couple signing a marriage certificate is a clear marker of success for the gay rights movement, but what of the confused gender-fluid pansexual who is shunned in lesbian spaces and mocked in gay ones? The erasure of complexity, though seemingly positive in ensuring short-term benefits, blocks the potential for long-term progress toward inclusive queer communities.

This erasure of bisexual identities from queer spaces and activism has material consequences: according to a study from the Williams Institute, the majority of LGBTQ folks in the U.S. identify as bisexual (or some version thereof, such as pansexual, polysexual, et cetera). Despite being the largest contingent of the LGBTQ community, bisexuals generally have higher rates of suicide, depression,

self-harm, smoking, and anxiety than heterosexuals or gays and lesbians.

One in four bisexuals in the U.S. lives in poverty. It doesn’t stop at individual trauma: bisexuals have the lowest social safety net (including income, health, and family services) in comparison to heterosexuals, gays and lesbians, leading to a greater risk of sexual assault, mistreatment by medical professionals, and violence.

Bisexuality for women, says the gay community, must be represented by active lesbianness, and nothing less.

San Francisco’s Bisexual Invisibility report states, “Because bisexuals have worse outcomes in more areas of health where specific data are available, conflating the data [with gays and lesbians] will generally make the picture look more urgent.

Yet few public health programs specifically reach out to bisexuals. This

means that even though bisexuals may have greater need, the resources primarily wind up benefitting lesbians and gay men.”

Treating a bisexual as homosexual when they are in a same-gender relationship and then as heterosexual when in a different-gender relationship (and presumably as asexual when single? This logic has many flaws) is preposterous. This thinking ignores intersectionality, thus tokenizing the lived experience of bisexuality as a simple stack of homosexual and heterosexual experiences, instead of highlighting the multifaceted reality where attraction to two or more genders is experienced personally. As long as complex identities are treated as an amalgamation of parts rather than a respected whole, biphobia will continue to render bisexuals invisible.

We could play my-oppressionbeats-your-oppression forever, but what is indisputable is that bisexuals are consistently abused, ignored, and forgotten. We exist, just as queerly as you.

Defining sexuality (or not) Written by Zoe Shaw

are only two genders.

Many terms related to queerness have undergone changes to their definitions over the years. “Bisexuality” is one of these terms, given its origins in a transmisogynistic world and its evolution alongside the growing transpositivity of queer spaces.

The term bisexuality may now seem cissexist because it reinforces the gender binary with the Latin prefix “bi” generally meaning “two,” leading to the common definition of bisexuality as the attraction to ‘both’ genders. Why would one identify as bisexual if there are far more inclusive options out there, such as polysexual, or the all-encompassing pansexual?

While it is entirely valid to prefer to identify as one of these terms, it is not appropriate to say identifying as bisexual is oppressive. Identity policing is counter-intuitive to the acceptance and cooperation we in the queer community should strive for — why pit us against each other for no good reason? The myth that bisexual people are only attracted to binary genders is incorrect, as is the assumption that the label “bisexual” implies there

Bisexuality: A Western history

Bisexuality has been recorded in human activity since before classical history. According to Violet Carson’s timeline in History of Bisexuality, it was Charles Gilbert Chaddock who first used the term “bisexual” as a sexual orientation in his translation of Psychopathia Sexualis in 1892. At that time, few people publicly identified as bisexual, one of the exceptions being

As is the case with most terms related to queerness, including queernest itself, we keep these identities in order to honour and recognize the struggles of our predecessors, even if their terms then were more limited in definition than they are now.

Stephanie Ngo | The McGill Daily the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Most significantly, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade (which marked the first anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots and developed into the Pride parades we see today) was coordinated by activist Brenda Howard, who was bisexual. A major reason why people who identify as bisexual wish to hang onto the term is because of this activist history. As is the case with most terms related to queerness, including queerness itself, we keep these identities in order to honour and recognize the struggles of our predecessors, even if their terms then were more limited in definition than they are now. Rejecting the terms that they created for us breaks

the strength of institutional memory and would fail to honour the progress that they started.

Modifying the definition of bisexual Many bisexuals today, and even some of the past, define bisexuality as the attraction to people of two genders. This does not necessarily refer to men and women, since a person who identifies as bisexual may be attracted to women and non-binary folk. This addresses the roman prefix that so many biphobic individuals use to reject bisexuality.

An alternate, and more common, definition is that bisexuality means the attraction of a person to two or more genders. While that may be

too close to the definition of pansexual for some, it is inclusive and cognizant of its history. Many people consider bisexuality and pansexuality to be interchangeable under this definition, in which case the individual’s choice of label is entirely up to their personal preference.

Although some do define bisexuality in the binary sense, therefore erasing anyone whose gender is not in the gender binary, the definition does not itself remain archaic.

In short, it is up to the individual to identify themselves. Unless someone defines their identity in an explicitly exclusive and oppressive way, no one should be able to police it.

6

Queer ing the cur r iculum

Students criticize lack of intersectionality, cohesiveness in queer studies Written by Ralph Haddad and Chantelle Schultz

L

ast semester, from April 1 to 14, Women’s Studies and Sexual Diversity Studies Student Association (WSSA) members went on strike to protest austerity measures. In an open letter regarding the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies’ (IGSF) response to the strike, published on April 4, the WSSA Strike Mobilization Committee pointed to the broader issue of the IGSF’s position as “a small, underfunded, and undervalued institute at McGill.”

The IGSF houses McGill’s Sexual Diversity Studies (SDS) minor, the only queer studies program at McGill. In recent years, professors and students alike have raised criticisms of the undervaluing of queer studies – academic studies relating to queerness and sexuality – at McGill, both within and outside of the IGSF. Delaney, Stu, and Grace, collective members at the Union for Gender Empowerment (UGE), spoke to The Daily about this inadequacy of queer studies classes at McGill. “We see a definite lack of [queer studies at McGill].

While there is a class about queer theory specifically offered this fall (WMST 302) and it is incorporated into most Women’s Studies classes, it is not pervasive throughout the various McGill majors,” they wrote in an email.

Professors also recognize the inadequacy of current course offerings on identity politics such as queer studies. Speaking to the state of queer studies at McGill, Jon Soske, an assistant professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies, wrote in an email to The Daily, “In my conversations with many students, I repeatedly hear that there is a deep anger that both the faculty and the program offerings at McGill do not adequately reflect and speak to the diversity of McGill’s student body.”

Another professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies, Brian Lewis, however, told The Daily, “I think queer studies have made impressive strides since a group of us established the SDS minor a decade ago. [...] We now have a flourishing program.” Lewis co-chaired the working group that campaigned for the minor, which was created in 2005.

Soske instead emphasized the need for a different kind of solution in the face of limited resources. “Historically, faculty members have tried to respond to [the need for more diverse courses] by developing separate undergraduate programs (African Studies, Sexual Diversity Studies) that have then struggled due to inadequate resources, both financial and human. This response has clearly proven inadequate. As faculty members, we need to work closely with students to develop more creative responses to a situation that has reached the point of crisis,” he said.

Limited course offerings in SDS minor

The IGSF, which was created in 2009 in part to address the lack of attention given to gender and sexuality studies within the Faculty of Arts, still only regularly offers one

Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily class on queer theory each academic year, SDST 250 (Introduction to Sexual Diversity Studies). Other classes dedicated to queer theory are offered as irregular, special topics courses. This year, for example, there is one such course, WMST 302 (Women’s Studies Current Topics 2: Queer Theory).

SDST 250 is the only required course for the minor, and the remaining credits toward the minor are complementary classes in other departments, or SDST 450 (Independent Reading & Research), and SDST 499 (Internship: Sexual Diversity Studies).

“There is a strong need for courses dedicated to queer studies [...] beyond tacking on a ‘week on queer issues’ to other content,” Alanna Thain, IGSF Director Heather, a U3 student with an SDS minor, spoke to The Daily about her experience taking the complementary classes. “You’re entering these classes that are having discussions about queer issues, about sexual diversity. But for most of them [...] it’s still like that entry 101 level, just from a different lens. [...] And that gets really, really redundant,” she said in an interview.

“There’s no deepening of the content you’re looking at. [...] It’s just such a shame that there isn’t a follow-up [SDST course to SDST 250].”

Alanna Thain, the current director of the IGSF, echoed the need for more in-depth classes on queerness in the institute. “There is a strong need for courses dedicated to queer studies [...] beyond tacking on a ‘week on queer issues’ to other content,” she told The Daily in an email.

“I really would love there to be more of a

cohesive network,” said Heather. “Because it does feel scattered, and it feels like an afterthought of a minor.”

Omar, a U2 Economics student, wrote in an email to The Daily that he decided not to minor in SDS because he found the selection of queer studies courses offered to be very limited.

Echoing Heather, Omar also noted that classes often focus too much on a general overview of available theory. “Even if they are more specialized, they are typically theoretical and don’t go in depth on pressing, real-world examples that are happening in today’s society.”

The need for intersectionality

Students have criticized how queer studies courses at McGill are isolated within the IGSF, and that, both within the IGSF and in other departments, courses lack in intersectionality.

For Lewis, “courses rooted in departments will continue to be the way forward. [...] As long as departments hire new people who will be able to contribute new courses, we can continue to expand the program.” Lewis pointed to HIST 433 (British Queer History), which he teaches, and HIST 431 (Topics in U.S. History: Queer America), which is taught

by Shanon Fitzpatrick this year, as examples.

However, a U3 History student, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Daily that queer studies classes at McGill need to be more intersectional. “We can’t just look for professors who are interested in queer studies.

It’s just not enough. They also need to be interested in other structural issues in the world.”

He also spoke about the lack of queer studies classes that engage with race. “I don’t want to learn about gay white people all the time,” he said.

Pointing to structural issues, he noted that a few professors are offering more critical and intersectional courses, but that these professors do so solely because of their own interest, instead of department mandates that require intersectionality, and thus “a disproportionate amount of labour falls onto these people.”

Heather agreed that queer studies courses outside the IGSF present a limited perspective on queerness. “The history classes that apply [to the SDS minor] that I’ve taken,

yes, in a word have been white and Western,” she said. Given that these non-IGSF classes make up a large portion of the courses that can count toward the SDS minor, this translates into a lack of intersectionality in the minor itself.

In terms of concrete solutions, the anonymous History student suggested “forcing departments to change their course offerings.” He said, “Stop offering courses like U.S. 18-whatever to 2000 [...] and replace that with Queer America. [...] I don’t think that’s a ridiculous request.”

In their email, the UGE collective members pointed to the lack of trans studies as separate from queer studies at McGill.

“Oftentimes, trans theory is grouped in with either queer or feminist theory. This grouping is reductionist to the fact that trans and queer are distinctly separate identities and theories, which at times have the capacity to overlap,” they said.

When asked why they think there is a lack of queer studies across all departments at McGill, they responded, “Queer education inherently questions norms. When people start to question norms, that destabilizes systems. McGill is built by and for oppressive capitalist systems that aim to educate and train workers to participate [in these systems] and perpetuate them.”

Resource allocation and budget cuts

Speaking to the effects of budget cuts on the institute, Claire Michela, the administrative and student affairs coordinator at the IGSF, explained that, every March, the institute applies to the University to teach a certain number of courses. “Sometimes [they] allow us to offer a bunch of courses, and sometimes not so many. This year we’re actually offering a lot.”

In an email to The Daily, Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts Hudson Meadwell pointed to the addition of a new tenure-track position shared between the IGSF and the Department of Art History and Communication Studies as a sign of progress. “Queer theory is one of several areas that is emphasized in the advertisement for the position. [...] This hire in the IGSF is significant. It is occurring in the face of budget cuts imposed on the University by the provincial government,” Meadwell said.

Thain, however, voiced persisting concerns about the cuts. “We have all felt that impact, in particular how [austerity] has limited our ability to offer a wider variety of topics courses, and of course, I wish we could offer a wider variety of courses on a regular basis to address the many ways that we look at questions of sexual diversity within our teaching programs,” Thain said.

Merely having a minor, Heather added, is not enough – in fact, she suggested, praising the existence of the SDS minor can be a tactic to hide the work that still needs to be done.

“No one’s looking necessarily into the fact that these minors don’t have the resources or professors or classes they need to exist,” she said. “[McGill] can check that box [by having the minor] but then also not do the work of incorporating these topics or these studies into their main classes that do have the resources and aren’t struggling.”

Defining the relationship

7

The line between romantic and sexual attraction Written by Julia Pingeton

I

f I were in a relationship with a man, people would assume I had strong romantic feelings for that man. Unless otherwise stated, the assumption based on this relationship would be that all of my romantic and sexual feelings revolve around men. The same would be true if I were dating a woman.

One way society tries to understand the messy world of sex and love is to restrict these parts of people’s identities into discrete and easily definable categories. So, who you sleep with has become the most important way of identifying your sexual and romantic life. This sounds straightforward, but it is not. Centralizing sexual activity as the sole marker of a person’s identity is a problem. It equates romantic and sexual orientation. This supports the assumption that the romantic feelings a person has are exactly correlated with their sexual feelings – which can make it difficult for people to understand their own identities and the identities of others.

If you sleep with boys, you love boys, if you sleep with girls, you love girls, and if you don’t sleep with anyone, you don’t love anyone at all.

Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation is not romantic orientation. Sexual orientation is a construct that is defined by the people we want to have sex with or who we feel sexual attraction toward.

Sexual activity can mirror orientation, but not always. Consider a person who wants to pass as straight in a society where being out as queer might be punishable either by institutional or social discrimination. It may be compulsory for them to engage in sexual activity against their true desires in order to maintain appearances. Now consider a person who is asexual. In a society where sex is used as currency, the pressure to engage in sex is high, though individual desire may be low, non-existent, or only existent in the presence of strong emotional bonds.

Sexual attraction is an “other”-directed activity. I believe sexual attraction can be conceptualized in a similar way as the senses: we are presented with individuals that either do or do not elicit a physical response. Thinking of this part of identity on the individual reactionary level takes away some of the need to generalize about sexuality and make assumptions about a person based on their sexual orientation.

A common stereotype, especially in communities that lack a strong queer presence, is that if you are out as gay you want to have sex with anyone (and everyone) of your gender. You’re reduced to a caricature of your sexual desires. I’ve had a friend describe to me the experience of being a gay man in our high school, where not many people were out. He had a lot of female friends who would ask, “Oh, you’re gay? I have a friend you should totally meet!” as if everyone who is gay is desperately seeking a partner at all times and will be attracted to anyone of the same gender. Despite the good intentions, the

gender of those you’re attracted to might not be the only consideration you have in finding a partner.

Romantic orientation

On the other hand, romantic orientation describes the people you are attracted to on an intimate, personal level. This can involve sexual attraction, but not necessarily. Deep and soul-crushing Wuthering Heights-type love is not the only way to have romantic attraction; crushes count too. In my experience, having sexual feelings for a person can be (too) easy to the point of being reflexive. But I have also felt uninterested romantically in a person to whom I still felt a strong sexual attraction. This is really annoying (and a perfect example of cognitive dissonance), but it serves to show that sometimes sex and romance are not at all inextricably linked.

Centralizing sexual activity as the sole marker of a person’s identity is a problem.

Personally speaking, experiencing romantic attraction has been more reflective of what I feel inside. It involves integrating how another person embodies those inner feelings in their own manner. Even having a crush on someone goes beyond the surface level. When I get crushes, it is because of the way a person speaks about their passions or the ideas they have or their curiosities, and a host of other attributes that sound cliche when written but remain true. I mean to say that romantic attraction is about finding those aspects of myself I value and discovering how those can manifest in someone else.

son’s personality relevant to a relationship. Distinguishing between sexual and romantic orientation leaves more room for people to unpack their own identities and ultimately understand themselves better and on their own terms.

At one point in my life, I identified as heteroromantic and heterosexual. This was largely due to a fear of shame associated with being attracted to other women. Even after slowly recognizing my sexual orientation as not exclusive to men, because I had never had a girlfriend, I questioned the legitimacy of my attractions to women. This in turn made the process of recognizing my own sexual orientation more confusing; how could I be into girls if I hadn’t ever dated a girl? And moreover, how could I be into girls when I had been into guys?

Part of my confusion came from mistaking romantic feelings for platonic ones in relationships with other women. I remember explaining my own romantic feelings to myself in terms of admiration, and even jealousy. By framing my desires in this way, it became less frightening to admit that feelings for other women were there. I still felt concerned that if I gave power to these feelings then my life would change. I felt it was possible my feelings would be dismissed as just a confusion of some collec-

tive female experience – as if my feelings toward other women would be invalidated by my feminism, or worse, judged as some stereotypical university phase women go through, where they sleep with other girls for the stories they can share with partners who are men later.

This confusion came in part from the fact that I felt like having relationships with men meant I couldn’t feel romantically about women in the same way.

Especially with bisexuality, I believe there is a fundamental misconception that, yes, you might be sexually attracted to two or more genders, but romantically, you’ve got one preference. Ironically, bisexuality is one of few cases where people seem to feel the need to separate romantic and sexual orientation – when the lack of proof of romantic orientation can be used to undermine a person’s sexual orientation.

Feeling romantically toward a person of my gender is easily dismissed as based in some imaginary collective female consciousness or sisterhood, while feeling sexually about a person of my gender can be dismissed because of fantasies about girl-on-girl as a vehicle for male arousal (à la Blue is the Warmest Color). Letting go of those restrictions over how I am meant to feel has been very freeing indeed.

Orientations and identity

Knowing who a person sleeps with does not mean you know who they love. The same is true the other way around. Sex is not love and love is not sex. Although the two can be present in one relationship, they are not mutually inclusive. Take, for example, someone who is asexual. Not desiring to have sex with anyone does not mean not having romantic interest in anyone. Being asexual does not mean you have to be aromantic; being heterosexual does not mean you have to be heteromantic. Our understandings of our own orientations exist on sliding scales.

Both sexual and romantic orientations are self-defined, and can be defined outside of the heteronormative cis-centric framework. For some, sexual orientation may not be totally based on gender. Some people who enjoy different kinks or fetishes might not consider gender at all when defining their sexual orientation – in these cases, it might be more helpful to define these relationships in terms of domination or submission. Similarly, romantic orientation is not necessarily based on a partner’s gender, but rather in key parts of the per-

Sean Miyaji | The McGill Daily

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QUEER FASHION

What is “queer fashion?” This question came up a lot while working on this article. Time and again, we contemplated the relationship between queer people and the style associated with them. We recognized that within our community there exists a particular aesthetic, one that is decidedly queer. In our conversations with friends and peers, we noticed a tension between wanting to acknowledge and celebrate queerness and its many manifestations, while also resisting the idea that all queer people are identifiable by their attire. Indeed, there is a pressure within our community to conform to this style, a pressure to be queer in the “right” ways. This tension is exactly why we wanted to put together this piece; we wanted to centre the imaginative and creative ways in which queer people are expressing their sexuality, gender, and politics through their style. We wanted to observe how queer people felt about the pressure to conform, and to demonstrate that you don’t have to look a certain way to participate in queer fashion. As many of our interviewees noted, queer fashion is fluid, malleable; it looks different on every person, and that’s part of the charm. Queer fashion is a fashion that lets you be different, or not. Like the term “queer,” it’s political, it’s transformative – it does something. That something could be being queer even when the world assumes from your appearance that you’re hetero and monogamous, or being so explicitly queer that no one can ever deny it. Queer fashion is fucking with heteronormativity, whether heteronormativity realizes it or not.

Note: Individuals who were photographed for this article were nominated by their friends. We asked that all nominations be consensual in order to prevent non-consensual outing.

All individuals nominated were contacted and invited to participate. There was no requirement of response or participation, and no sort of policing of identities. All information in this article was included with the explicit permission of those interviewed and photographed.

These interviews have been edited for clarity and length. Full length versions of the interviews featured here, as well as additional ones are available at: mcgilldaily.com/queerandsexuality.

Photographs by Sonia Ionescu, Sophie Jean, and Arianee Wang. Compiled and written by Lucie Lastinger, Arianee Wang, and Rhiana Warawa.

-Michael MorganWho is your favourite artist? There are a lot of really cool people in music right now who are doing musical art, especially from a queer trans perspective. In terms of fine art, JJ Levine, a local photographer who does trans photography.

Who is your fashion inspiration? Me, but like five-year-old me. I love what I wore back then. I think a lot of what I wear is like if I had been able to wear fun dresses and like cooler colours, but still wanting to wear overalls and turtlenecks, because that’s all I wore back then.

What thought process informs the way you dress on a day-to-day basis? A lot of it has to do with where I’m going, and especially what parts of town I’m going to be in, or what I’m doing. If I’m going to campus, I have to dress pretty plainly, because I find that it’s not the safest space to be dressed in a skirt.. How I’m getting somewhere, where I’m going to have to be, for how long, and who’s going to be there, and who’s going to see me – all play into that.

What does queer fashion mean to you? I think queer fashion is something that is really broad because of how broad the term “queer” is. I think it’s very much people finding something that is for themselves and not following what people think they should be wearing. I think it’s something that can be super revolutionary. I think queers are also on the frontline of a lot of fashion right now, especially with the movement back toward dressing almost like kids, in pastel and overalls. I know there’s a huge thing for trans people, the idea of a lost childhood, for trans women who didn’t get to present as women until later in life, the idea of lost girlhood, and maybe that’s [them] going back for it.

What is your favourite fashion statement? I like anything mesh and seethrough. I find that [those] can be really, really fun to wear.

-AdamWho is your fashion inspiration? I’m really inspired by Leigh Bowery, a club kid in the seventies and eighties in London. He would create these incredibly intense outfits. There’s this really famous one where he made himself look like one giant rectangle, then he would go dancing in the club with that, but he also did a bunch of quite racist costumes, and did a lot of cultural appropriation, so that is awful. He is my fashion inspiration insomuch that I want to do what he did, but not shittily, without the appropriation part of it, because he didn’t need to do that. He came up with so many cool costumes that didn’t rely on that.

What thought process informs the way you dress on a day-to-day basis? I feel like I dress in three different ways. One is my everyday school/work outfit, one is what I would wear – what I used to wear – when I went out to get laid, [and] one is what I actually want to wear out in life. As I get closer to what I want to wear, it gets more and more feminine, but it’s a scary thought to wear what I actually wear, [at McGill], which is one of the reasons why I feel like taking this picture on campus is so strange, but so cool. This is one of the only places where I really don’t feel quite like I can dress the way I want to.

What does queer fashion mean to you? Two things: one would be those parts of fashion that I hate so much -– the competitiveness, the very capitalist nature of it, that it’s about selling clothes. The parts that I find exciting, and that’s what I think is cool about queer fashion too, is that fashion is about experimenting with how you present [yourself ] to the world, how the world perceives you. The other thing: I think queer fashion is closer to an art form than a commercial fashion show, which is about showing clothes and people buying them. I like the idea of a fashion show that is about wearing weird things, that is more about an art piece.

What is your favourite fashion statement? All black, all velvet, all at once.

-Zizou-

Who is your favourite artist? Victor Vazquez, known as Kool A.D., has this really great Instagram where he just posts his own art, which is very maximalist in terms of his use of space and also radically anti-white supremacy and anarchist. It’s cool, look him up.

Who is your fashion inspiration? Heems is huge inspiration stylistically. He does this thing that I really like where he wears items that come from his ethnic background, which is Punjabi and Hindu. He’ll wear a turban atop his designer Hermès jacket, or turn the scarf into a turban. He’s flamboyant, wears skin-tight Union Jack-print jeans, which is subversive in its own way considering the history of his own family. In his most recent album, he references the Partition and how his family fled India/Pakistan in the eighties and moved to Queens, New York, where he grew up. I also really love Kat Blaque and aspire to make my own femme clothes that fit my body just like she does! My makeup inspirations are various, it’s hard to find people with my same skin colour, but I really like Jeffree Star, Stef Sanjati, and ItsMyRayeRaye on YouTube.

What thought process informs the way you dress on a day-to-day basis? Whatever looks good and how I code to be, to represent my identity, so I basically dress masc out of path of least resistance. I don’t really have any femme clothes and so I try to code just with makeup and wearing a shoulder bag.

What does queer fashion mean to you? Being able to exist and express outwardly the mixed identity of oneself.

Is there anything else you would like to share? My identity, well it’s constantly changing, but agender and also trans femme, so like it signifies that I was DMAB [designated male at birth]; I dont identity as a woman, which is why I would pick trans femme over trans woman. So agender trans femme, where I reject most masculinity.

-GraceWho is your favourite artist? The Sisters of Invention. They’re a bunch of multiply disabled women who work for this company that helps mentally disabled people produce their own art. They have an album on Soundcloud; the lyrics are really amazing and they have a lot of musical talent. It’s rare that you find disabled people who are able to work together and get the resources to publish [their art].

Who is your fashion inspiration? It’s so obvious and typical and trashy, but I love Cher from Clueless. I try to be a really disabled and husky Alicia Silverstone, but I don’t think that plays out very well because I’m not even blonde.

What thought process informs the way you dress on a day-to-day basis?

For me, it’s kind of heavy. Fashion for me is about attempting to manipulate how other people view my gender, but in a really specific way, because I’m not trying to pass as a cis woman but I am trying to look like a dyke. It’s a lot about safety; I’m not going to pretend like I’m in huge amounts of danger, but I do feel like I can’t wear what I want a lot of the time, because of where I’m going or who I’m interacting with. What gets me out of the house is dressing like I’m attending my own funeral.

What is your favourite fashion statement? A necklace with two interlocking Venus symbols on it. I try to, whenever I wear something that is typically masculine or butch, put this on top of [the outfit], and I’m obviously not a man.

What does queer fashion mean to you? Queer people have always been the trendsetters. I don’t think it is one thing, because fashion choices are inspired by the culture you grew up in or values that are important to you, and that means a lot of different things.

-DelaneyWhat is your fashion inspiration? I think it’s drawn from multiple sources. I would say my friends, and a lot of Instagram fashion bloggers, especially plus-sized women and some non-binary folk. I really love GabiFresh and Nadia Aboulhosn.

Who is your favourite artist? Beyonce, Rihanna, Solange, Erykah Badu.

What thought process informs the way you dress on a day-to-day basis?

“What do I feel comfortable in?” and “How can I express myself the best way possible?” Also, it often feels like putting on a pseudo-armour. When you have a body that’s usually really commented on by people or society, or is very marginalized, a lot of the time, you do things to make yourself fit better into societal standards of what is attractive or make yourself hide. So, for a long time I tried to blend in and make myself be hidden, but now I’m working on being more comfortable with myself. So it’s more about what makes me feel good, regardless of how I think other people will feel and what their comfort is with my presence or my body.

What does queer fashion mean to you? It means fashion, because you could even say that “straight” fashion is run by queer individuals. Queer fashion is just fashion. Or it’s not fashion. It can be anything.

How do you deal with staying fashionable in the Montreal winter? I don’t.

I get a staple piece and that’s just worn all the time. And layering. It got to the point where I wanted to be wearing fashionable and nice things, but, man, wanting to be warm just really overtakes any fashion sensibility.

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10

Toward an intersectional sexual assault policy Student groups criticize consultation process Written by Cem Ertekin

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cGill has been widely criticized for treating sexual assault cases dismissively, and a student-led Sexual Assault Policy Working Group (SAPWG) has been drafting a comprehensive sexual assault policy for the University since the 2013-14 academic year.

In April 2012, three former R*dmen football players were charged with sexual assault; although the prosecution dropped the charges in November 2014, the plaintiff said that “the way the trial was dealt with wasn’t fair at all.”

Students were kept in the dark about the case until November 2013, when an article published by the Montreal Gazette revealed that the three players had been allowed to remain on the team despite an active sexual assault case against them. The SAPWG, with members affiliated with the Union for Gender Empowerment (UGE), the Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) staff and executives, and other students, emerged following backlash to the administration’s response. The group is still working on the proposal, which has recently been criticized for lacking in intersectionality.

The proposal of a comprehensive sexual assault policy was first announced by student panelists at a Forum on Consent held in February 2014, following the backlash. It called on the administration to develop a pro-survivor sexual assault policy, to ensure that the policy would apply to all members of the McGill community, to create a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator position, and to include measures to build a safer space on campus.

“The policy proposal that was announced at the Forum on Consent laid out the groundwork for what the policy would include, the kind of values it would abide by – [it was] basically a mandate for a policy,” Cecilia MacArthur, SSMU Academic Research Coordinator, explained to The Daily in an interview. According to this mandate, the working group would ensure that the policy be proactive, pro-survivor, anti-oppressive, and accessible.

The next milestone of the project happened in November 2014, when the working group held a town hall to ask for feedback from the community at large.

Following the town hall in November, more students became involved with the SAPWG, which started the third and current phase of the policymaking. According to MacArthur, most members of the SAPWG wanted to have the policy approved by Senate by May 2015.

Marginalized people are often disproportionately affected by sexual assault.

In March, the group reached a critical juncture. MacArthur explained that the working group consisted predominantly of white, cisgender, and able-bodied people, which prompted the SAPWG to seek input from groups on cam-

Stephanie Ngo | The McGill Daily pus that represented more marginalized voices.

“We felt like doing anti-oppressive trainings, or trying to think critically, while still being a group with the demographics we had would not be enough to say we had [...] maintained the antioppressive pillar of the policy,” MacArthur said.

However, the QPIRG-McGill Board of Directors had substantial concerns about the policy and felt that the push to submit the policy to Senate was preemptive.

“QPIRG-McGill’s Board was concerned about the lack of intersectionality in the drafting of the policy. We’ve been incredibly supportive of and grateful for the work that the working group has been doing, but felt that we needed to push – and still need to push – the [sexual assault policy] to reflect practices around anti-oppression and antiracism,” said Ella Belfer, a member of the QPIRGMcGill Board of Directors, in an email to The Daily.

“Sexual violence is gendered and racialized, and the [sexual assault policy] needs to be able to recognize and address these dynamics explicitly.

While we know it wasn’t easy for individuals in the working group to delay the submission of the policy, we’re optimistic about the efforts that have been made by the working group since our conversations in March,” Belfer continued.

“I think one of the big issues in the way we approached getting feedback last year was that it was very much like, ‘this is the policy, how can we insert these things?’” MacArthur said. “I think we all assumed that they were going to be minor edits when we did our intersectionality consultation.”

According to Talia Gruber, a member of the SAPWG, this problem stemmed from the fact that the SAPWG focused too much on what could be passed at Senate. “We got so focused on what we could pass, what we thought the administration would take from us, that we pushed aside all of the main reasons why we wanted to come up with this policy to begin with,” Gruber said in an interview with The Daily.

Marginalized people are often disproportionately affected by sexual assault. The policy draft from March did not explicitly mention how people are differently affected by sexual assault because of their identities.

“We’re not claiming to be the voice of intersectionality, but to us, and hearing what other people have been saying to us, there’s nothing in this document that talks about how differ-

ent people with different identities experience sexual assault differently,” Belfer said.

Some also criticized the working group for rushing the policy. In response, Gruber said that trying to work within preexisting frameworks was frustrating. “When you’re trying to work with these policies that are already existing [and] that are [...] not even close to what we need them to be, you want [new policies] to be pushed as soon as possible – work out the details later,” Gruber said. “Then we had to take a step back and say, ‘Whoa, that’s not enough.’ If we’re not taking the time to make this better, we’re failing.”

In an interview with The Daily, Dean of Students André Costopoulos explained the difficult nature of passing any policy through McGill’s Senate.

“This is a major piece of policy that’s going to have major implications within the community and we have to get it right. If you look at the Charter of Student Rights for example [...] it took ten years to get [it] from the first discussions to passing at the Senate,” Costopoulos said.

SSMU VP University Affairs Chloe Rourke, whose predecessors Claire Stewart-Kanigan and Joey Shea were closely involved with the policy, said that it is understandable that members of the SAPWG wanted the University to adopt the policy as soon as possible. “There is a certain urgency to the policy and the need for it. But I think in the end [...] consensus was reached that it’s better to bring a policy later that everyone felt better [about] and [that] was more in line with the values of the working group, than to bring one that was less so,” Rourke said.

The SAPWG has consulted with various groups on and off campus over the summer and plans to spend the rest of this semester improving the quality of the policy. These groups include the Joint Board-Senate Committee on Equity and its subcommittees, the Office for Students with Disabilities, the First Peoples’ House, Accessibilize Montreal, and Concordia’s Centre for Gender Advocacy. The SAPWG’s plan is to bring the policy to Senate by March.

There will be a town hall on intersectionality in the policy on November 19. Furthermore, those who wish to bring their comments to the working group can do so by emailing sapp. mcgill@gmail.com by November 22, at which point the group will review the comments.

Divorcing queer activism from mar r iage How marriage equality is harming queer communities Written by Paniz Khosroshahy “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” – Audre Lorde

I

am queer and I am against gay marriage. On June 26, rainbow filters covered the Facebook profile pictures in my newsfeed – pictures mostly belonging to straight people – in celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage. I, on the other hand, was grieving the waste of resources that the marriage equality campaign had been. I was also laughing at how all these people had suddenly become “allies,” through just a few clicks on Facebook to “celebrate Pride!” Racists were suddenly allies.

Political conservatives were suddenly allies.

Misogynists were suddenly allies. Even the homophobes from my high school were suddenly allies.

When, instead of celebrating, I posted articles on marriage abolition, I faced an instant backlash, mostly from straight people insisting that this was a great moment in history. But was it really? As a Black queer friend of mine told me, “We’re still dying in the streets, we still can’t breathe.”

The queer liberation movement, as all movements tend to be, has been hijacked by its wealthiest and most privileged members. For the queer 1 per cent, the white gay men who have been funding the biggest gay rights organizations with the goal of legalizing marriage equality, the fight is largely over. While marriage equality has been sucking up all the resources, however, the doors of LGBTQ youth centres have been closing. As Yasmin Nair, co-founder of the arts collective Against Equality, writes, there is simply no more money left for the rest of us.

Marriage equality is an example of what author Katha Pollitt calls Pollitt’s law: “Outsiders get access when something becomes less valued, which is why women can be art historians and AfricanAmericans win poetry prizes.” As more people delay marriage, divorce, or never marry, it has become okay to open the doors of marriage to some queer people, instead of challenging this outdated institution at its core. Marriage equality is about creating a binary between the good and bad queers: only certain bodies in certain state-approved, longstanding, monogamous relationships are allowed to receive state benefits, immigration status, tax deductions, inheritance, and healthcare.

Many queers are attracted to the idea of marriage for these reasons, but these benefits should not depend on state-sanctioned coupling. What good is inheritance for children of queer people when the LGBTQ community is disproportionately affected by poverty? Marriage is about allowing the state to control one’s sexuality, one’s body, one’s life – the opposite of liberation. And who can say marriage is about a life-long commitment when the divorce rate is nearing 50 per cent, or that it’s about love when there are far too many unhappy married couples?

Marriage is just one of many ways of expressing love – one that happens to be state-sanctioned.

Marriage equality is not progressive, but is in fact a terribly conservative project. It is about settling down, raising children, moving to a suburb, and finding stable jobs. Marriage feeds capitalism, and not only because of the multibillion dollar wedding industry, but because it creates a pattern of consumption: honeymoons, houses, cars, chil-

Rahma Wiryomartono | Illustrator dren that will later continue the show. Marriage equality isn’t a challenge to the system; it only makes more people eligible to become the state’s complying subjects. And this is nothing new.

Marriage equality isn’t a challenge to the system; it only makes more people eligible to become the state’s complying subjects.

As marriage-abolitionist academics Craig Willse and Dean Spade have argued, marriage has historically been used to perpetuate numerous oppressive systems. As a tool of anti-Black racism, the criminalization of familial relations outside of marriage has been used to justify the exclusion of Black children from state programs and services.

Marriage was a tool of colonialism, imposed by settlers along with other European norms of gender and sexuality on Indigenous populations in order to force their assimilation. The criminalization of practices outside of marriage and the nuclear family, such as communal living and child-rearing, facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples through the removal of children from their communities.

Marriage is also a tool of the patriarchy, tying a woman economically to her husband and father, romanticizing child-rearing, and forcing women into unpaid labour. Women grow up in a mirage of romanticized images of marriage and happilyever-afters. Women are taught to start picking the names of their future children when they’re ten years old, to run for the bouquets at weddings, and to keep in mind that their biological clock is ticking.

Finally, marriage is a tool of immigration control, forcing people to stay in abusive relationships because their status depends on it.

In legalizing marriage equality, Western states also co-opt queer struggles, painting themselves

as gay-friendly, and the rest of the world as homophobic. This is ironic, since these same Western countries once ‘saved’ the nations they colonized by criminalizing the non-Christian act of homosexuality. Now, they once again use a white-saviour narrative to condemn the laws they encouraged in foreign lands. One clear example of this act, known as pinkwashing, is the Israeli regime’s effort to portray itself as gay-friendly, in order to detract attention from its genocidal crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

So if marriage isn’t the issue, then what is? It’s racism, classism, homelessness, violence, healthcare, education, deportations, prisoner abuse.

It’s the murder rate of trans women. It’s queer youth homelessness and queer suicide rates. It’s the medical-industrial complex that only extends healthcare benefits to state-sanctioned sexual partners. It’s big pharmaceutical companies denying HIV-positive folks access to medication. It’s the discriminatory immigration system that denies immigration status based on lack of marital status.

And no, marriage equality is not a baby step in combattin any of these. For too long, the liberal narrative of “progress” in social justice movements has pressured us into addressing only the symptoms and not the causes of oppressions. For many queers, surviving in a capitalist, white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy is so difficult that marriage is simply irrelevant.

So if you are straight and outraged because you have heard the loudest gay voices speak in support of marriage equality, if you have become a supporter for fear of being labeled a homophobe otherwise, I encourage you to read more on the topic – Against Equality is a great resource – instead of telling me, a queer person, what to think about marriage equality.

If you’re queer and you want to get married, I still encourage you to learn more. I wish you a lifelong love, but I do encourage you to consider your positionality and privilege in the queer community. Say “I do” with full awareness of the limitations of marriage equality for achieving liberation. Your discomfort with challenges to marriage equality is not really relevant – this is a systemic critique, not a personal one.

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Not just gal pals There’s something about girls that I love so much. I’ve spent most of my life dating boys, letting myself believe that I was hetero. After I would do the frickle frackle with my male lover, I would fall asleep wanking off to Megan Fox’s boy-eating character in Jennifer’s Body. Oh, how poetic – it should have been so obvious that I loved girls even from a young age. I always loved how soft girls were; their willingness to share lip balm and compliments warmed my heart, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized that this affection for women wasn’t simply platonic.

The first time I fell in love with a girl I was in my second year of college. We were in the same political science class and I always noticed her when she walked into the lecture hall late; her cheeks would be flushed from the winter frost, but her eyes were sharp. I had just started coming out as bisexual to my friends and I hadn’t had any experience flirting with girls other than sharing drunken kisses during the twilight hours of a party

when anything could happen. I was terrified of talking to her, so I admired her from afar, imagining what her life was like outside of the 90-minute window I had of being in the same room as her.

When weekly conferences started, I was thrilled to find out that we were in the same timeslot.

I had come to the first conference early and was going over my class notes, preparing talking points so that I could suck up to the TA. She walked in and I probably looked startled because when we made eye contact it was electric.

She held my gaze for a brief moment and sat next to me. The TA came in and started off the conference by telling us to introduce ourselves to our neighbour. She turned to me with a bright smile and said the most beautiful words I had ever heard: “Hi, I’m Emma, what’s your name?” She told me about the Women’s Studies course she was taking and how she loved reading feminist literature and that she was interested in political science because she was an activist. I knew that I was fucked. She wasn’t a fantasy any-

more, she became very real to me and I knew that my whole world was going to be consumed by her.

But I wasn’t afraid, I wanted to jump into the abyss with her.

We started hanging out outside of conference. We did cute little things together like drinking hard cider in her tiny apartment while dancing around to Vampire Weekend and taking coffee breaks together in between classes. We shared little kisses when we were high and fell asleep in a pile of blankets, our legs intertwined. She gave me a USB with her favourite songs and I wrote little notes that I slipped into her backpack when she was in the bathroom. They weren’t love songs or love letters, but they were mementos of our affection for each other. Our love was small, but warm; it was never a widely publicized affair. We never held hands in public or took any pictures together. I wasn’t ashamed of being bi, but I wasn’t ready to face all the strange looks and invasive questions that I knew were inevitable. So to the world we were just gal pals, even though to me she was everything.

– Isabel Lee

Yellow xvi. When I was sixteen, I had a crush on a girl who liked the colour yellow. I thought it was a weird colour to like, but I saw her yellow in her blond highlights, in golden medieval lettering, and in September leaves still on their trees. xvii. When I was seventeen I slept with a boy whose yellow was neon snapbacks and beaten down skateboard wheels. You blame your migraines on his yellow, on stained markers and obnoxious 3D glasses. That was when I started hating yellow. xviii. I still hated yellow when I dated a boy for a year who worshipped the fucking colour almost as much as he worshipped me. He saw the blinding yellow of the sun in my brown eyes, in my dull smile, in the cuts on my arms that he always tried to kiss. His yellow is eggdrop soup vomit, is filmy plaque on rotten teeth, is vodka-lemonade piss. xix. I don’t know if she likes the colour yellow, but her yellow is warm mustard-dyed sweaters and goldfinches waiting on the open pages of twentieth century paperbacks and lit mason jar candles and chamomile tea, and my dull smile turns bright.

– Zoe Shaw

Sports

November 16, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Step aside, hockey

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Soccer might be Canada’s new favourite sport Victor Depois Sports Writer

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t would be a lie to say that Canada holds a prominent place on the international soccer stage.

Currently, the Canadian Men’s Soccer Team is 102nd in the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) rankings, between Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Benin.

However, soccer is growing in popularity among Canadians – the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil was watched by 30.7 million Canadians and there was broad media coverage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2015. According to the Canadian Youth Sports Report, soccer is the most popular team sport among children aged 3 to 17, just ahead of hockey, and is gradually gaining an importance that no one can deny.

Last year, among kids aged 3 to 17, there were 236,000 more registered soccer players than hockey players. The gap between hockey and soccer has historically existed and is expanding. Seventeen years ago, 32 per cent of Canadian kids aged 5 to 14 taking part in sports

played soccer, whereas a little less than 30 per cent played hockey. Five years ago, 42 per cent played soccer and only 22 per cent played hockey.

There are several explanations for the growing popularity of soccer among youth in Canada, the first of which is cost. Hockey equipment is expensive. The annual expenses for parents supporting their hockey-playing child are on average around $1,600 per year, in comparison to approximately $700 per year for soccer. Additionally, all you need to play soccer is a ball and an open space, whereas to play hockey you need skates, a stick, protections, and ice.

Soccer is also becoming a popular sport to watch in Canada. More people watched the 2014 World Cup final than the 2014 Stanley Cup final, highlighting a growing Canadian passion.

Canadians bought more than 29,000 tickets to the 2014 World Cup despite the Canadian team’s failure to qualify. Soccer was given more visibility this year with Canada hosting the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which became the most widely watched Women’s World

Cup ever. The quarter finals averaged 3.2 million viewers per game in Canada alone.

The development of the sport and a bid for hosting the 2026 World Cup have made the idea of a professional Canadian league sound less far-fetched. A national league would certainly increase Canada’s chances of winning the bid.

Canada already has three teams in Major League Soccer (MLS), the professional North American men’s league: the Vancouver Whitecaps, the Toronto FC, and the Montreal Impact. However, the number of franchises in Canada is increasing. This could very well lead to the creation of a Canadian league, which would boost the development of the sport here, as the creation of the MLS did in the U.S. over twenty years ago.

Slowly but surely, soccer is becoming part of the Canadian sports culture. The number of children playing soccer from an early age continues to increase.

The expansion of a sport is admittedly gradual – hockey and basketball didn’t reach their lev-

Saima Desai | The McGill Daily els of popularity in Canada and the U.S. overnight. Nevertheless, the seeds of a Canadian ‘soccer culture’ have been sown, and it

wouldn’t be surprising to see the country become prominent on the international soccer stage in the decades to come.

Varsity sports hype not in sync with synchronized swimmers Little recognition for national champions

Niyousha Bastani The McGill Daily

S

ynchronized swimming rarely gets the spotlight at McGill, but for no good reason.

When the Martlets Synchronized Swimming team isn’t busy training, it’s busy winning national championships. The team has claimed 12 titles as national champions of the Canadian University Synchronized Swim League (CUSSL) since the establishment of the league in 2001-02. The Martlets were named national champions again most recently in February.

With the McGill Invitational Meet – their only home competition – on November 14, The Daily sat down with two members of the team to talk about their experiences, goals, and how to increase the size of their fanbase. Michelle Moore, a third-year Kinesiology student, is on the novice team, and Vickie Leuenberger, a second-year student in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, is on the expert team. This is Moore’s first year doing synchronized

swimming, while Leuenberger has 12 years of experience.

The McGill Daily (MD): I know that McGill isn’t sports fan central; it’s not known for its fanship. But from knowing or seeing McGill sports and the support other teams get, do you feel supported?

Vickie Leuenberger (VL): I feel like [with] synchro, just as a sport in general [...] people have a lot of misconceptions, and I feel like [...] yes, actually people don’t care [and] don’t know about synchro. [...] Just two years ago, we were finally accepted as a varsity team, and I think that was something very important, but I still feel like we’re not having as much support as other teams. Like last year and the one before, our headshots were not even posted on Athletics. [...] We’re probably the most successful team at McGill University, and people are not talking about us.

Also I feel like in general, varsity supports more men’s sports than [women’s] sports. So that’s a bit tricky to talk about, but you know often [for sports that have both men’s and women’s teams]

they’re going to only advertise the men’s game [...] So of course being a [women-only] sport, we know that we’re not going to get as much support.

Michelle Moore (MM): I know for me, finding out about synchro, it was something I definitely stumbled upon, as opposed to it being advertised to me.

VL: Yeah, exactly, we’re not advertised at all, and that’s super sad. [...] But, I mean, I understand that synchro does not bring money, it’s true, and not a lot of people are interested in synchro. Partly because it is a [women’s] sport and secondly because it’s an artistic sport.

MD: I know your team has won the nationals 12 times. For this year, looking forward, what are your goals?

VL: Of course we’d like to bring back that trophy again. [...] It’s been a while, since we’ve only had one expert team, but this year we didn’t have enough swimmers to make two teams [...] so of course that will make a difference. So I don’t want to be super confident and be like ‘yes, we’re bringing back that tro-

phy,’ but we’ll see.

[Our coaches] want this to be a valuable part of our McGill experience; they want everyone to feel safe and comfortable. [...] Yes, it’s stressful [...] but I really feel like we support ourselves a lot, so that’s really cool. So yeah, we want to bring back that trophy, but our ultimate goal is to do our best.

MD: What are the most difficult parts of being on the team?

MM: Well, I’d say for me, because it’s my first year, it’s a lot to learn. Even now, it’s still very overwhelming. Even learning how to [go] upside down for the first time, and being like, ‘wow, I’m floating upside down underwater, I’ve never done this before.’ There’s a very steep learning curve.

VL: I guess with synchro what’s hard [is] we’re really working on having small patterns, so we get kicked a lot. My whole body is like covered in bruises and scratches, it’s really intense.

MM: It’s a full-on contact sport.

VL: Oh, it is, it’s terrible. And we’re also practicing a lot of pilots,

which is when you throw someone in the air, but the thing is, I’m the middle person, so when the person falls, she either falls on me or in the water. So I have bruises on my shoulders. The physical part is getting pretty hard.

Michelle, what was one misconception you had about synchro that changed when you started?

MM: I thought that it’d be hard, but I didn’t realize how hard. Because when you watch synchro, it looks so easy, so effortless, and it’s definitely not.

VL: I think another misconception that people have is that [they don’t know] that we don’t touch the bottom, ever, never, never ever. If you touch the bottom, you’re disqualified, so that’s something very serious. People think that we’re just touching in the shallow end, like in Austin Powers [...] but that’s not what it is.

—With files from Emile Flavin This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

12

November 16, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Beirut’s underground art scene flourishes

Culture

New CBC program explores art as political tool Anne-Cécile Favory Culture Writer

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he new CBC documentary series Interrupt This Program is a glimpse at artists creating and innovating in cities that have experienced significant unrest.

This first season, which premiered on November 6, will introduce viewers to the arts scenes of Kiev, Beirut, Port-au-Prince, Athens, and Medellin. With no host, the 30-minute long episodes are brief, stylish snapshots of the ways art serves to subvert, personify, and interpret culture, society and state.

Created by Montreal-based producers Nabil Mehchi and Frank Fiorito, the weekly episodes each showcase three to four young artists challenging the status quo. The first episode, set in Beirut, introduces four unconventional artists, each attempting to relay their lived experiences and cultural consciousness of their city through their own mediums.

Among them, a baladi dancer named Alexandre reclaims what he calls a disappearing art form.

Alexandre tells the story of how he came to the creation of his bellydance routines that have brought

conservative audiences to embrace a man performing an art form traditionally danced by women.

Alexandre built a space, where there hadn’t been one, to express himself, and in turn allow others to do the same.

The necessity to create a space for art in hostile political environments is an overarching theme of Interrupt This Program. In fact, the show succeeds in not only portraying alternative art, but also bringing to attention the creation of platforms for artistic expression by artists like Alexandre. Overcoming the societal perceptions of the gendered body, Alexandre’s show is a testament to reclaiming traditions and using them as a platform to carve out identities and narratives that incite change.

Reclaiming cultural identity is also a driving force behind street artist Yazan’s work. A talented writer, Yazan revels in recreating a sense of Arab heritage through calligraphy. Having to distinguish his work from the sheer volume of tagging that followed the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, Yazan’s creations are composed of intricate letters that combine to form the portraits of prominent

Lebanese artists, notably Fairuz, Kahlil Gibran, and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Despite the brevity of scenes focused on Yazan, the viewer is able to understand the significance of his work in the greater context of Beirut. His art serves as more than just an homage to various figures; it is an attempt to recapture the identity and culture of the city following the civil war. As shots of a bright and sunny Beirut are shown, Yazan is seen painting an eight-story mural, a portrait of the wellloved actress and singer Sabah.

Yazan conceives new ways to fill the city with his narrative.

In contrast to sectarian rhetoric that divides people on social fronts, artists like Yazan seek to open discourse surrounding art and pop culture.

These hidden narratives are exactly what Gaffar Toufar, a Beirut-based hip hop artist, strives to expose. While telling the story of witnessing an Indian woman being racially profiled and unjustly arrested, Toufar displays the anger inspired by deep-rooted racial and classbased injustices that continues to

Amanda Fiore | Illustrator compel artists like him to create.

The show conveys that creative imperative throughout the episode, bringing the viewer into a space where artistic expression becomes urgent.

In need of an outlet to express this anger, Toufar channels his passion into lyrics and beats. In the absence of an established hip hop industry, Toufar is given free reign on his artistic process and expression. Tinted in rich hues of blue and red, Toufar’s scenes

are mesmerizing displays of lyrical power and the driving energy of struggle. Performing in an underground nightclub, he is the embodiment of wild artistry, one that is only possible in a setting where societal norms are subverted and new rules are set by artists just like him.

The next episode premieres Friday, November 20 at 8:30 p.m. and is also made available online for viewers every week.

Welcome to the chamber pop universe SHYRE genre-hops with ease

Taylor Mitchell Culture Writer

S

eniors, students, and families gathered to watch chamber pop group SHYRE take the stage on November 8 at L’Astral.

The juxtaposition of the cafe style seating and the pounding concert atmosphere reflected the band’s traditionally opposed sounds of classical chamber music and upbeat pop.

Though pop concerts traditionally involve an energetic crowd jumping up and down to the music, the sitdown setting allowed the audience to take in each of the band’s many elements. Meanwhile, the dramatic, fluorescent stage prompted the enthusiasm of pop while avoiding the stereotypical concert experiences like strangers spilling beer on each other in crowded venues with little seating.

Indie music fans demand a constant reconstruction of music in an attempt to discover a sound that’s never been heard before. Most bands stumble in the process, as the desire to stay current in the industry can result in overly experimental, obscure textures, creating the disingenuous sound that is ‘too indie.’ Upon hearing that SHYRE’s

SHYRE performing at L’Astral.

Taylor Mitchell | Photographer

release of their new chamber pop album Atlas Flag featured interpretive dancers, apprehension abounded among fans. However, SHYRE quickly demonstrated that they had discovered nuance where many bands had oversimplified: the sweet, innocent vocals and careful way each note was handled at the release showed the band’s immense reverence for their craft. Their presence led the audience to not only feel the authenticity in their music, but to truly fall in love with the sounds they heard.

The set opened with the beautiful, spacious vocals of Sarah Rossy coupled with her soft piano melodies. Slowly, the string instruments emerged with gentle wisps of classical phrases as the dancers began their performance. However, most of the focus was on the expressions of the musicians; from the eternally smiling drummer to the focused manner with which the string instruments were played, each musician told a story with with their approach to their instruments.

Natalie Yergatian – the Schulich

School of Music’s first graduate female jazz drummer – told The Daily that their band had “discovered such beauty that is rarely, if ever, spoken of” from touring around Quebec. This beauty captured each audience member in its dream-like essence. These atmospheric influences emerged through the way the band was able to utilize every facet of their instruments – the scratching of the drumstick against the cymbal, sporadically plucked notes from the violins, the singers’ lilting scats – to create natural earth tones that fell softly into place.

Partway through the performance, the horn section from Busty and the Bass took the stage along with McGill’s a cappella group Effusion, in conjunction with increasingly intricate dance choreography, furthering the immersive experience. The smooth vocals, classical chamber instruments, and a jazzy percussion and horn section avoided sounding disjointed together by creating a balance: with softly plucked strings and tender voicings, the instruments played in respect of each other instead of struggling to dominate.

Though the stage was completely filled, the complex harmonies created were unifying instead of overpow-

ering. The musicians layered sounds to create a new texture, where jazz, indie, and classical were all able to exist simultaneously.

The title track “Atlas Flag” – which combined dreamy lucid vocals with a pounding drum beat – proved to be a standout of the evening with its multidimensional texture of instruments. Before the song began, Rossy held the audience in thrall with spine-tingling vocals, instilling a sense of tense hope and optimism as she repeated “I see it, I see it now.” As the song ended off with a unified crash, the vibration remained suspended throughout the room, the audience set in momentary awe before erupting into thunderous applause.

SHYRE, with charismatic stage presence, mixed soft, layered tones in conjunction with a bold new approach to music. “A lot of what we do,” Yergatian told The Daily, “is an expression of what we have experienced, reflected on and then forged into our own dreamscape/universe”.

It’s these pure elements that demonstrate SHYRE’s masterful understanding of their instruments, allowing them to bend classical genres around sounds as varied as the landscapes by which they were inspired.

Culture

November 16, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

13

Growing up in a whitewashed world Media’s role in socializing people of colour and its repercussions Jedidah Nabwangu Talk Black

I

was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by the presence of two different cultures that did nothing but shower me with eternal love and affection from the moment I left the womb. The unconditional love that my parents had for my sister and me, and for themselves, allowed me to live the majority of my life in pure bliss, leaving me free from some of the world’s most pressing issues. For a long time, I mistook ignorance for innocence with the help of the sheltered space I had been raised in, which shielded me from racism and bigotry. Societal norms didn’t help my situation either, since they too advocated for the silence and neglect of race issues and relations.

The fact is, our society is characterized by whitewashed societal norms that leave very little room for people of colour (POC) to claim their own space, something that began with colonialism and is carried on and maintained by neo-colonialism today.

Every day, POC are marginalized in various ways that target even the youngest of generations, often resulting in them having to conform to the dominant culture that surrounds them but, by definition, does not include them.

Due to its constant presence, the media is arguably the most prominent weapon of marginalization

Saima Desai | The McGill Daily that targets POC belonging to the youngest demographic, and its excessive influence at such a young age can prove to be quite damaging in both the short and long run.

The worst part? Most young POC probably don’t even recognize this influence yet, accepting the inferiority that exclusive media imposes on them, thus hindering the development of their identities in the process.

When I was little, Cinderella was my favourite princess, and I loved everything about her. I loved her elegant blue dress, the way she spoke with such grace,

her beautiful straight blonde hair, and her pale white skin. I loved her so much that I wanted to be her, so I slowly started to resent myself and my physical characteristics because they didn’t match hers. I truly felt that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t look like her.

What’s even more tragic is the fact that this mentality followed me through my adolescence, causing me to eventually develop a very problematic outlook on life. The reality was that, at the time, there were no Disney princesses to whom I could relate on

a physical level. My beauty standards, which viewed whiteness as the ideal, made me reject my own body. By high school, this flawed mentality that had once only preyed on my self-esteem had become multidimensional and much more dangerous. I had conditioned myself to ignore instances of racism, like the misrepresentation of Black people in the media or large-scale racial violence, simply because I didn’t feel like I could identify with the Black community. I had become culturally assimilated; ignorant and left without a clear identity.

It cannot be denied that there has been a significant rise in the acknowledgement of the successes of POC and especially, women of colour in the last decade, and there is no doubt that the media has played a large role in this. However, it’s clear that we still have a long way to go when it comes to issues of race and gender. As actress Viola Davis pointed out in her Emmy Award acceptance speech, women of colour in Hollywood are still denied opportunities when it comes to casting and overall representation in the industry. While little Black girls now have a Black Disney princess with whom they can identify – Princess Tiana, introduced in 2009 – there is still a prominent racial hierarchy that exists within Hollywood that aims to maintain the white status quo, particularly when it comes to women. Threats to the development of POC’s identities are very much present.

I can’t change the way that my racial identity was negatively affected by these cultural ideals, but I can use my experience and the tools available to me in order to make sure the next person doesn’t go through the same thing. Everyone deserves to grow up comfortable and confident in their own skin, so this discussion must continue.

Talk Black is a column that seeks to engage in anti-racist culture writing, addressing art, music, events, and more. Jedidah Nabwangu can be reached at talkblack@mcgilldaily.com.

Long Red Hair is an autobiographical delight Graphic novel explores sexuality and the supernatural

Josika Gupta Culture Writer

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verybody’s childhood is infused with magic – it’s just that very few of us can recognize it. Long Red Hair, an autobiographical graphic novel by Meags Fitzgerald, invites us to share some of the author’s own enchanted memories. Like magic, not all of the memories in the book are good, but all of them are captivating.

Long Red Hair’s back cover claims that “Fitzgerald suspects that she is unlike her friends,” but that’s not quite right. When she meets her father’s gay friend in the opening pages, it’s clear that she recognizes and resonates with his difference on a subliminal level. However, in the

story that immediately follows, she strives to be different, but in a ‘normal’ way. In other words, Fitzgerald, as a queer woman with a strong interest in the world of make-believe, has always known that she’s different, and alternates between accepting and rejecting that difference.

Struggling with not being ‘special’ is another major theme of the graphic novel. As children, we are often told that we are “special” or “unique” by our parents, but the simple fact is that not everybody can be special. Everyone can, however, be different, and Fitzgerald shares with us her intimate journey to that realization.

The movies and books that helped Fitzgerald become the person she is today feature prom-

inently throughout Long Red Hair. They show us what a transformative effect supernatural and mythological monsters have had on Fitzgerald’s life.

[Fitzgerald] uses her penchant for the supernatural [...] and [...] her artistic skills as sources of strength.

Our generation didn’t necessarily grow up with creature features, but we have nonetheless been surrounded by urban legends and supernatural entities.

From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Charmed to Beetlejuice, otherworldly characters have been a staple in Fitzgerald’s life, and there’s no surprise as to why – these stories depict people embracing their differences and drawing power from them.

In this way, Fitzgerald learned to embrace her bisexuality. She uses her penchant for the supernatural, her comfort with singlehood, and even her artistic skills as sources of strength.

Although Long Red Hair is a testament to Fitzgerald’s storytelling skills, her art is what truly steals the show. Adjusting her drawing style to every story, Fitzgerald sets the right mood for each of her memories. Her recollections from childhood and early adolescence are drawn

in a hazy, nostalgic manner, with only the media she consumed drawn clearly. The lines of everyone’s faces are relaxed, the shading is deep, and the base colour is a warm rust red, for a combined effect of a sketched sepia that allows the reader to sink into her past.

The pages detailing her more recent memories are drawn with cooler base colours and sharper lines, conveying a sense of stark reality. Fitzgerald’s art gives Long Red Hair multiple layers; it takes the reader from a murky, dreamy past to a clear, immediate present.

Overall, reading Long Red Hair feels like taking a bubble bath – it’s warm, comforting, and nostalgic. It’s the sort of book with which you curl up, drink tea, and unwind.

Culture

Getting unstuck

November 16, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

14

Singer Hanorah talks new solo project, Shia LaBoeuf Tristen Sutherland Culture Writer

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was in the McGill metro station, craning my neck in search of my interviewee. I had first seen Hanorah in person at a Jam for Justice performance. Her sound was intriguing: smooth R&B beats, dreamy synths, and layers of soulful vocals. After some wandering in the station, I spotted her, smiling warmly and leaning against a post, trademark curls neatly piled on her head.

When we settled down for the interview, I asked about her sound, showcased on her debut album Unstuck. Her album is the perfect soundtrack for a long bus ride in snowy weather. I told Hanorah this, and she explained that most of the songs on the album were written on long metro and bus rides to the studio. Writing on public transportation is a creative ritual for the artist. “I think the lack of stimulation helps me because when you are on the bus or metro, you have no distractions. So, I use that time to write,” she said.

Hanorah began her musical career in a unique way. With roots in blues, rock, and jazz, music has been a constant force in her life and she had always contemplated a music career, but found herself putting it off. It was only when she saw Shia

LaBoeuf’s viral video “Just Do It,” where a bearded LaBoeuf yells at his audience, “Just do it! Make your dreams come true!” that she decided to really dive into the world of music.

“I saw [the video]. Then, I had a panic attack at 3 a.m. because I wasn’t doing anything with music. So I contacted everybody I knew in music and got a few emails and got a few producers and then just rolled with it.”

Not only is Hanorah a singer, she’s also a visual artist in the Fine Arts program at Concordia. Her visual art often has social commentary attached to it. “In my subject matter, I [explore] these grotesque baby heads that [are] racially ambiguous and [have] these gross limbs of skeletal figures. [...] And I think for me, that has a lot to do with the fetishizing of youth in a deathdenying society.”

This type of commentary translates to her musical style. Everything on the album is done deliberately and has a deliberate meaning. Unstuck’s album art features Hanorah posed with with a lemon and a watermelon.

“Fruit comes up a lot,” she said. “It’s a symbol of femininity and fertility, and [...] turning [the imagery] on its head and letting my femininity speak second to my artistry.”

“There was also a child-like instinct to it. To cut all of [the fruit] in half and draw a little face on my

leg. [...] That is what this project was too, it was kind of just like playing. There is this childlike curiosity in the nature of my work and I think that is why I [incorporate so much colour].”

Speaking on her artistic decisions as an up-and-coming artist, Hanorah said that she was initially hesitant to include her song “Cover Me” in Unstuck. She said, “It’s a four chord song like every other pop song and I was reluctant to put it on [the album]. But because of my resentment of the industry of pop music, I decided to make it a song about a girl who falls in love with her exboyfriend’s little sister. Just kind of poking fun at a progression that can be used for any song at all.”

This is not the only song on her album that plays with underlying social norms. “I have a song, we just shot a music video for it, and it’s called ‘In Order of Appearance.’ I don’t think many people know the real meaning of the song, but it is actually about sexual assault and rape culture. It kind of sounds like it’s a memory and like, ‘oh look at my life’ and this big existential thing. But it is really about rape culture. And the music video is really exploring that.” In the clips that are available of the music video online, Hanorah is tied up with rope, nude, and lay-

Unstuck album art.

Courtesy of Hanorah

ing on a table as the song begins to play, representing themes of sexual assault in a visceral way.

When I first saw Hanorah perform live, she wore a long patterned cloak and bright green lipstick. I asked her about the distinctive style she rocks on stage. “In an industry that controls the standards of beauty so strongly, I like using those same materials to make you uncomfortable and challenge that.

Sometimes, I will wear bright green lipstick or the weird hair and everything: boy’s clothes, girl’s clothes, and everything. We are told things are either male or female or that things are either pretty or ugly. I like flipping this notion on its head and being kind of kickass in the process.”

From the way Hanorah describes her artistry, it seems that it is more than just a musical endeavour. But does her elaborate style, album art, and odd choreography overwhelm the music?

Hanorah replied, “You could even say that being an artist is a performance in itself. There is this whole idea of what an artist is supposed to look like and how they are supposed to behave, what they are supposed to do with their time. And I think that merging performance art with music was just so natural, for me. They are both time-based. They both involve the body. It is body and time. And music is body and time.

And art is body and time. It made so much sense to marry them for me.”

Coming soon at the Phi Centre Nov.

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Editorial

volume 105 number 12

editorial board 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9

November 16, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Against the NEB’s colonial consultations

phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com

The McGill Daily is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. coordinating editor

Niyousha Bastani

coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor

Cem Ertekin news editors

Saima Desai Arianee Wang commentary & compendium! editors

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rec@delitfrancais.com cover design Sonia Ionescu contributors Mackenzie Burnett, Victor Depois, Marina Djurdjevic, Anne-Cécile Favory, Emile Flavin, Josika Gupta, Ralph Haddad, Ryan Jamula, Sophie Jean, Vaishnavi Kapil, Nadir Khan, Paniz Khosroshahy, Clara Kyung, Lucie Lastinger, Isabel Lee, Taylor Mitchell, Sean Miyaji, Jedidah Nabwangu, Stephanie Ngo, Ki-eun Peck, Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez, Julia Pingeton, Samanthea Samuels, Zoe Shaw, Tamim Sujat, Tristen Sutherland, Rhiana Warawa, Rahma Wiryomartono

T

ransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline would transport approximately one million barrels of oil across Canada every day, traversing the territories of 180 different Indigenous communities. The National Energy Board (NEB), which regulates Canada’s pipelines, is mandated by the Canadian government to consult affected Indigenous communities in “oral tradition hearings.” However, intervenors are not allowed to discuss “technical and scientific information,” as this is excluded from the NEB’s patronizing definition of oral tradition.

In limiting what Indigenous intervenors can present as oral tradition evidence, the NEB reinforces a hierarchy that subordinates Indigenous oral traditions to Western conceptions of science, and shows that it does not respect Indigenous knowledge and voices.

Indigenous leaders have long denounced the NEB as biased and its process as illegitimate. At the end of September, Kanienke’há:ka protesters interrupted one of the NEB’s public consultations in Montreal, and in British Columbia the Tsleil-Waututh Nation recently asked the Federal Court of Appeal to stop the NEB’s review of the Trans Mountain pipeline, arguing that the federal government must consult with the nation directly before starting the process. The NEB’s bias in favour of private industry runs deep: at least half of its board members have previously been employed by the energy sector. The makeup of the board speaks to whose ‘expertise’ the government truly values in the regulatory process. As such, many Indigenous leaders have called

on the government to conduct nation-to-nation consultations instead of deflecting this responsibility to a regulatory body.

Due to the restrictions imposed on Indigenous presenters, the framerwork of the NEB’s oral tradition hearings perpetuates a colonial distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge. As Serge Simon, the Grand Chief of the Kanesatake Mohawk Council, told the Montreal Gazette, “You can’t divorce traditional testimony and our traditional knowledge of the land from science.” In Western society, science is valued as the most accurate form of knowledge. Thus, in defining Indigenous oral traditions as unscientific, the NEB explicitly undermines the validity of such knowledge. As they stand, the hearings cannot be truly informative. Rather, they will only serve to tokenize Indigenous peoples so that, on paper, the NEB and TransCanada can declare that Indigenous perspectives were taken into account.

Nation-to-nation consultations are the only way to make sure that Indigenous sovereignty is respected in the potential implementation of the Energy East project, and the government chose not to conduct them. But, if the NEB hearings are to go forward, the very least the NEB could do is give intervenors basic respect by allowing them to present any and all information in the manner they deem to be important and relevant. Anything less is an empty, tokenizing charade.

—The McGill Daily editorial board

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Compendium!

November 16, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Lies, half-truths, and ethics in student politics journalism.

SHMU General Assembly takes revolutionary action

Students overwhelmingly in favour of anarcho-syndicalist restructuring John Reed The McGall Weekly

T

he November 9 General Assembly of the Student Headquarters of McGall University (SHMU) ended in a most revolutionary manner, with the organization declaring its sovereignty and restructuring itself as the Students’ Union of Soviet Socialist Faculties (SUSSF).

In the new structure, former faculty and departmental associations have been reorganized as soviets, also known as councils in non-revolutionary parlance. The Departmental Soviets report to the Faculty Soviets, and in turn the Faculty Soviets are represented in the All-Student Congress of Soviets.

Speaking to The Weekly, Abraham Kream, the newly appointed Chairperson of the Council of Students’ Commissars of the Students’ Union and former King of SHMU, Lord of the Twelve Faculties, Protector of Social Justice, Lord Paramount of Arts, Eternal Sovereign of la Nouvelle Résidence, the Advisor on Matters of Social Responsibility, Interim Carer of the SHMU Babies, Conqueror of Climate Change, Great Restructurer, and General Assembler, could not hide his tears of joy, which gleamed under the moonlight as they slid down his revolutionary cheeks into the triangular goatee that he had grown overnight.

“The vast majority of the student soviets are represented at the Congress. A number of delegates from the Soviet of Graduate Students (SOGS) are also present.

The mandate of the compromising SHMU has terminated. Backed by the will of the vast majority of the students, backed by the victorious uprising of the students and the garrison which has taken place in Shtaneer, the Congress takes power into its own hands,” Kream declared to a massive crowd, all dressed in red and turquoise – the colours of the SUSSF. The SUSSF’s declaration of independence comes as no surprise. As anyone who has been following the activities of SHMU’s Small Council for the past few weeks will know, Kream and Emilia Trotsnik (former SHMU VP Isolation and Obliviousness, newly appointed Students’ Commissar of Military

Students celebrating their revolutionary victory.

“The climate change policy, the anti-austerity mobilization, our involvement with the provincial student federations, supporting the demilitarization of the campus... Anyone who has ever heard about Marx would have been able to tell you that a socialist revolution was nigh.”

Emily Trotsnik, Students’ Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs and Naval Affairs of the Students’ Union) have been spearheading a revolutionary movement to push former SHMU into anarchocommuno-syndicalism.

In an interview with The Weekly, Trotsnik explained the revolution. “Just as a blacksmith cannot seize the red hot iron in their naked hand, so the students cannot directly seize the power. It was for this reason that we have been working to increase the power of SHMU – to become the vanguard of this revolution,” Trotsnik

said. “The climate change policy, the anti-austerity mobilization, our involvement with the provincial student federations, supporting the demilitarization of the campus... Anyone who has ever heard about Marx would have been able to tell you that a socialist revolution was nigh.”

Not everyone has been happy with the SUSSF’s declaration of independence. Deputy Provost Student Gripes and Weed Sir Trololollivier Sandwichheart has attempted to enter Shtaneer, only to

Pigeon Dog | The McGall Weekly be reminded that he does not have the proper documentation to enter the building.

“They told me that it was a ‘sovereign state,’ and that I ‘had no right’ to be in this building,’” Sandwichheart said, using one too many scare quotes in his sentence.

Also notably, the Hotel-Motel Faculty of Predatory Capitalism has chosen to stay out of the revolution, effectively placing itself on the wrong side of history.

Currently facing a leadership crisis, the Predatory Capitalism Undergraduate Board has turned to campus celebrity Lexus Centrikov for guidance.

Speaking to a group of students all suited up, Centrikov said, “I fucking told you so.”

“Ever since last year, I’ve been telling you. SHMU is too political.

SHMU is socialist. SHMU is anarchist. SHMU is anarcho-syndic–” Centrikov said before being cutoff by a francophone student who would only identify themselves as Pierre-Joseph.

“Well technically, the current system that they’ve enacted is far from being anarchical. First of all, they restructured themselves as a state, with a considerable amount of bureaucracy and hierarchy.

That is hardly anarchical,” PierreJoseph explained in French.

“Regardless of the fact that they may or may not be anarchical, this new state is a danger to my wellbeing and yours. What do you think will happen when the students reclaim the means of education?” asked Centrikov.

Representatives from Parti Québécois (PQ) approached the SUSSF on November 12, congratulating the newly formed state on its initiative to declare its independence. In spite of their congratulatory demeanour, however, the representatives looked rather disappointed, as if something had stolen their thunder.

Refusing that her statement be translated from French, PQ representative Pauly Morois said, “Nous félicitons l’Union étudiante des facultés socialistes soviétiques.

Nous l’envions, même. Il semble que toutes et tous sont en train de déclarer leur indépendance, sauf tu-sais-qui. Eh bien, en tout cas, belle job les gars.”

In the upcoming days, the SUSSF will be hosting important foreign dignitaries with irrelevant political titles such as the Queen of Canada, the King of Spain, the Prince of Monaco, and the Pope.