The McGill Daily Vol 106Iss11

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Volume 106, Issue 11 | Monday, November 21, 2016 | mcgilldaily.com I haven’t gone to class since 1911

The “Body” special issue

CONTENTS 3

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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NEWS

14

SSMU Council discusses motions from the GA

15

The “impact of punishment” in Canada

South Asian Film Festival brings Bollywood to the diaspora in Montreal

8

Opera McGill’s Alcina is appropriative and racist

COMMENTARY

18

NDP McGill speaks out on being barred from selling white poppies AFSPA has facilitated massive military abuse in India

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The “Body” Special Issue

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Cautionary semantics

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IJV McGill holds first event on the creation of a modern Jewish nation

Sarah Shahid News Writers

I

ndependent Jewish Voices (IJV)’s McGill chapter hosted their first lecture event on Monday, November 14. The club invited Yakov M. Rabkin, professor of history at l’Université de Montréal, to talk about his book “What is Modern Israel?” which was released earlier this year.

Rabkin began his talk by explaining the relationship between Zionism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism. In his book, he traces the birth of Zionism, which emerged at the end of the 19th century as a reaction to several instances of anti-Jewish violence in Europe and the onset of writings by German intellectuals such as Theodor Herzl.

He discussed the exile and massive migration of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe due to religious and political discrimina-

tion that led to a forced settlement in Palestine.

“There is a very important transition that happened with the concept of anti-Semitism,” explained Rabkin.

“A hundred years ago, if you thought Jews belonged to a different state, you were an anti-Semite, but now if you deny it, then you are an anti-Semite.”

He said he believes it is important to distinguish between racial and religious anti-Semitism in order to better understand the frameworks in which Israeli sentiment function.

“Religious anti-Semitism offers a way out by means of conversion,” he explained, “however, racial anti-Semitism offers no escape as such.”

This distinction ultimately postulates the existence of a Jewish race and a nation-state propagated within a colonial setting , according to Rabkin.

In his book, Rabkin also discusses the role of Soviet Jews in constituting the Jewish nationality.

“The Soviet Jews [when they settled in Palestine] took with them not only Russian songs and Russian culture, but they took with them the concept that the world hates us,” he said.

He went on to shed light on the influence of Jerusalem-based think tanks that have been working for several decades to make Israel central to Jewish identity.

“This agenda has succeeded for a large majority of secular Jews through programs like birthright,” he said. “Israel has become a residual identity for Jews even if they have never been to Israel or don’t speak a word of Hebrew.”

He concluded his talk by analyzing why organizations like IJV disturb Zionist voices.

“People who equate Zionism to Judaism become very sensitive to criticism since religion is supposed to be private,” Rabkin explained. “The concept of antiSemitism has become a tool by

which any sort of Zionist criticism is silenced, but criticism of Israel does not necessarily have to be anti-Semitic.”

The talk was followed by a question and answer period where several students, professors, and members of the Montreal community shared their experiences of going to Jewish day school, practicing Judaism, and what Zionism means in the context of Judaism as a religion.

“Criticism of Israel does not necessarily have to be antiSemitic.”

—Yakov M. Rabkin Guest lecturer

In an interview with The Daily, Jad El Tal, a U3 student and AUS Equity Commissioner who attended the event, spoke about the importance of solidarity with proPalestine Jewish voices on campus.

“I came here because solidarity is important to me, and I know that there are wonderful, wonderful Jewish people on campus that are pro-Palestine,” he said. “So I’m just here to show my support and solidarity and because IJV is new to McGill, so I want to be part of that.”

A co-founder of IJV McGill, Anna, spoke to The Daily about her hope of establishing a community of diverse Jewish voices on campus through their group.

“Events like this [...] speak to Jewish voices that otherwise don’t have a place to go or to feel like their story is being validated,” she said. “There is clearly an empty seat in the Jewish auditorium that is now being filled.”

PGSS supports AMUSE bargaining priorities Council also hears reports from Christopher Manfredi and Ollivier Dyens

Xavier Richer Vis The McGill Daily

O

n Wednesday, November 16, the Post-Graduate Students Society (PGSS) met for its monthly Council meeting. Councilors passed two motions, one regarding support for the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) bargaining priorities, and another to create the PGSS Member Services Committee.

Council also heard several presentations, as well as executive reports.

Provost to Council Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic) Christopher Manfredi came to Council and made himself available to questions from any graduate students.

“Could you speak a bit about the recent course lecturers’ union and collective agreement that the University entered [...], particularly the exclusion rate, or percentage of courses that can be excluded, and for those who are concerned about graduate students having an opportunity to teach their own course?” asked PGSS Academic Affairs Officer Nicholas Dunn.

A year ago, course lecturers at McGill unionized to form the McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union (MCLIU). Their collective agreement included clauses regarding the posting of teaching opportu-

nities as course lecturers, as well as a point system to determine seniority amongst lecturers. More importantly, it also included a “reserve clause,” which gave the University the right to assign up to 15 per cent of the courses taught by course lecturers to individuals and bypass the traditional posting and seniority rules. Those postings could go either to graduate students, professionals, or other academics.

“The way we did it this year,” answered Manfredi, “it is that we asked [MCLIU] to give us an estimate of how many of those exclusions they needed. Not [surprisingly], the number they asked for exceeded the number that we had available, so we had to make some decisions about how to allocate [those posts].”

Manfredi acknowledged the collective agreement was still in its first year, and required fine tuning, but said that this is normal, and his office had been in contact with MCLIU to revise certain parts of the agreement in the coming year.

DPSLL speaks to Council Deputy Provost, Student Life and Learning (DPSLL) Ollivier Dyens also came to Council, where he presented last year’s (Fiscal Year 2016) finalized budget with official numbers.

Dyens explained various parts of the budget to Council, including the expected 1.5 per cent rise in tuition for students, which is a standard

part of his presentation, but also discussed the sales and services portion of the budget.

“Last year, there was a lot of talk that we cut student services,” said Dyens, “and we have not cut [any].

The [sales and services] budget has actually increased, albeit not as much as we would like to see.”

“Salaries are increasing,” he continued, “a little because we’re hiring more people, but mostly because we have a salary policy at the University, and the University is committed to increasing salaries by a certain amount [as a result of collective agreements].”

Dyens spent extra time discussing the University’s ‘overhead’ budget, which has caused some controversy in past years: it was a major issue during the 2012 Quebec student protests, when the province saw extensive cuts across universities.

Overhead charges essentially mean the University bills studentfee funded units for central administrative services, which are automatically provided through the operating budget.

The University has justified this in the past by saying that they cannot pay for these administrative services themselves without it “affecting other services,” like social or health services.

Currently, the University charges approximately half a million dollars in overhead fees to McGill students;

PGSS Council.

Xavier Richer Vis | The McGill Daily

it was originally projected that these charges would constitute five per cent of the University’s yearly budget.

“Five per cent for overhead isn’t a huge amount,” argued Dyens. “Another university will charge ten per cent, 15 per cent. [...] It’s not great news, but it’s not excessive either.”

“The good thing here is that [this year] it only went from three to four per cent,” he continued, “and the projection [was] that overhead would go to five per cent next year, but it seems that things are getting better.”

PGSS support for AMUSE AMUSE has been engaged in bargaining with the administration for a new collective agreement since

November 10. After having gone on strike from October 29 to November 2, a motion was brought forward for PGSS to support AMUSE’s bargaining priorities, which include priority hiring for jobs employees have already undertaken, accurate job descriptions, seniority and benefits for casual workers, and a $15 minimum wage.

“We urge the administration to conclude an agreement with AMUSE in an equitable manner consistent with their demands,” the motion reads. “We support the union’s efforts to achieve a living wage and to receive respect in line with their immense contributions to the university.”

The motion passed unanimously.

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News

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

SSMU Council discusses children in care, birth control Sustainability Projects Fund also discussed

Ellen Cools The McGill Daily

O

n Thursday, November 17, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council met to discuss two motions that were originally put forward at the Fall General Assembly (GA), and hear two presentations, one on what McGill can do to support “students from care” and one regarding the Sustainability Projects Fund. Councilors also heard committee and executive reports.

Presentation on kids in care SSMU President Ben Ger and Arisha Khan, a researcher on “students from care” and SSMU Funding Commissioner, presented research regarding “children from care” (i.e. children who were taken into custody by the state or other government authorities because their parents could no longer provide for them) and how SSMU and McGill can better support them.

Ger and Khan went through a number of reasons why children enter care, noting that a disproportionate number of children in care are Black, Indigenous and/or people of colour (BIPOC). They elaborated on a number of common issues that arise when children are in care that overlap with each other, such as identity, racism, mental health, and lack of access to resources.

For example, Khan explained that “members of the LGBTQ community, they often aren’t able to voice or find themselves. […] When you’re in a situation when you get bounced around from house to house, you don’t really have a comforting environment to voice those things.”

In their presentation, Ger and Khan also gave statistics focusing on what happens to children in care when they age out of the system.

“Less than 13 per cent enroll in any sort of post-secondary program, accompanied by less than two per cent actually graduating from those post-secondary institutions […] largely due to lack of support,” Ger said.

“When it comes to homelessness, half of the homeless young adult population is in care,” he added.

Khan explained that McGill and SSMU should take steps to advocate for students who come from care because “sticking to the status quo means that we’re perpetuating a cycle where thousands of young people aren’t given the opportunity to actually move on to adulthood.”

“Most, as you know, end up homeless and don’t have the opportunity to pursue secondary education,” she continued. “So, without obviously the educational supports as a component, but generally social supports as well, their […]

ability to contribute to society […] is thwarted.”

Ger and Khan suggested McGill and SSMU should focus on diversity-inclusive enrollment strategies, active outreach, and improving support, specifically for racialized students.

“We need to look into enhancing and implementing programs surrounding those [...] areas and different resources we can implement,” Ger said.

He elaborated that “financial support is where we’ll start; so things like tuition waivers, room and board, designated scholarships and bursaries, living stipends, etc.

There are programs that currently exist that could be expanded on, things like the access bursary fund that SSMU currently has.”

Ger and Khan further shared the different universities’ programs which address the areas of education, emotional, health, and finance, as a basis for McGill to build a future program.

Environment Representative Tuviere Okome asked if McGill’s current bursary program “[takes] into account the struggles of marginalized students and puts that into account when it decides who it gives the entry bursaries to?”

Khan responded that as far as she is aware, there are no designated supports.

So far the exact number of students this will impact is unknown, and Khan noted that they plan to do a survey to help determine the magnitude, as many students from care don’t disclose their background.

Motion Regarding Global Access to Medicines Policy Councilors discussed a motion regarding global access to medicines policy, which was presented by Sonia Larbi-Aissa, co-president of the McGill chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicine (UAEMMcGill) and a former Daily editor.

“The club [...] has a long term goal of seeing what’s called a ‘global access licensing framework’ implemented at McGill University in their research areas,” LarbiAissa explained.

An access licensing framework is “specific to the way that innovations that are invented at McGill are patented through McGill,” she added.

The motion calls for SSMU to adopt a policy regarding global access to medicines whereby “SSMU supports increased access to medicines throughout the world as a public good and a human right [and] calls for the implementation of a humanitarian or global access licensing framework for healthrelated technology transfers to the private sector at McGill University.”

SSMU Council.

It also called for SSMU to advocate for the implementation of such a global access licensing framework through the Senate and respective University committees.

A humanitarian clause would be added to the text of the patent agreement, which would say that if a humanitarian situation or crisis occurs, “this innovation that’s in this patent would be […] available either at cost, [meaning] the pharmaceutical company that’s producing it wouldn’t charge anything over the fixed cost of producing it […] or they would allow the intellectual property of the patent — so the way in which the medicine is made or sold — to be transferred to a generic distributor,” Larbi-Aissa explained.

This would mean developing countries should be able to produce and access the drugs at a much lower price than when a developed country produces it.

Senate Caucus Representative Joshua Chin asked if the McGill chapter of UAEM has approached the Post-Graduate Students’ Society with a similar proposal, to which Larbi-Aissa responded that they have not, but may do so in the future.

Senate Caucus Representative William Cleveland noted that LarbiAissa had talked about humanitarian crisis, “yet the term crisis does not appear any time in this motion, and the only time [I] really see ‘humanitarian’ used is in the third point of [the] very long whereas clause.”

“I was wondering if a humanitarian basis could really be made for any time anyone has no access to essential medicines,” Cleveland stated.

“Because I [...] looked at the advocating for the implementation for a

Ellen Cools | The McGill Daily humanitarian global access licensing framework, and I went to your parent organization – the larger chapter of UAEM – and that also says nothing [about] humanitarian crises or humanitarian issues in general at all.”

“I was wondering because you’ve spoken about the humanitarian crises, in what way do you see this being incorporated to actually show that within this policy?” he asked.

“The whereas clause you’re referring to is basically the text of what’s called the SPS or the Statement of Principles and Strategies for the equitable dissemination of medical technologies that was adopted by Harvard, Brown, Oxford, and I believe 22 other institutions,” Larbi-Aissa responded, “and yes, it doesn’t specifically refer to humanitarian crises; [it] was actually put in as an example of what could be adopted by McGill.”

“Harvard, Oxford, Brown and others decided not to make it contingent on crises,” she added. “Yes, that means that a humanitarian basis could possibly apply to something a little less acute, but I ask why is that a bad thing?”

She further said that if the University needs specific reference to humanitarian crises to be in the motion for it to be implemented, UAEM was willing to add it.

The framework of the humanitarian clause will be up to the McGill Senate and those who will be making the decisions, she explained.

Arts Representative and former Daily editor Igor Sadikov noted a procedural issue with regards to this motion, in that the policy requires two readings by Council. As such, he proposed splitting the motion into two questions.

The first part of the motion calling on SSMU to adopt a policy will be read again at another Council meeting, while the second part of the motion advocating for such a policy was voted on and passed.

Motion regarding free birth control A motion regarding SSMU support for cost-free birth control coverage was also brought to Council.

The motion was presented by Julian Bonellostauch, the policy director for McGill Students for the New Democratic Party (NDP-McGill).

Bonellostauch explained that many countries have birth control covered in their health plans, excluding Canada.

“However, it is covered for Quebec residents here at McGill and we want to expand that to non-Quebec Canadian residents and also ask McGill to see if they can do the same for international students,” he explained.

Currently the cost of birth control is only covered for 80 per cent of non-Quebec students. “So it would be a modest increase in the coverage but it would have great benefits because we feel that unfortunately cost is a giant barrier for health care,” Bonellostauch added.

“The main barrier to access to contraception is not cost but rather access to a family physician in order to get a prescription for hormonal birth control,” Chin said. “So my question is, have you explored this route in order to facilitate access to contraceptives?”

Bonellostauch responded that he has not personally done so, but other members of NDP-McGill are looking into it. The motion was then voted on and passed.

News

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Socialist Fightback against Trump Attendees discuss need for solidarity and systemic change

Ryan Canon The McGill Daily

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n Thursday, November 17, around 120 students gathered at the Shatner Building in the Madeleine Parent room for an event called “How can we defeat Trump?” The event was organized by the group Socialist Fightback at Concordia and McGill, which aimed to bring people together with the shared goal of “organiz[ing] ourselves to fight back against [Donald Trump].”

Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign has received international coverage, with many denouncing his proposed policies, which include building a wall along the U.S.Mexico border, a temporary ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States, and derogatory comments against women, people of colour, people with disabilities, Mexicans, Muslims, and others. His election as U.S. president was shocking to many, and has resulted in a number of domestic and global protests against growing nationalism, xenophobia, and protectionism.

The event, which marked the highest turnout for Socialist Fightback at McGill and Concordia, consisted of a talk given by Joel Bergman, an organizer and member of Socialist Fightback for over ten years, that was accompanied by a concurrent French translation. An open floor discussion amongst the attendees followed.

“How did Donald Trump win the election? How did this racist, sexist, misogynist, lying billionaire become the President of the most powerful country in the history of the world? And how were all of the analysts so wrong?” Bergman asked the crowd. “Everyone said ‘this is impossible, it will never happen, he’s a joke’ [...] It wasn’t just one or two stupid analysts; this was across the board. This was not an ordinary election, and we are not living in ordinary times.”

“Obviously, everyone was surprised, even I was somewhat surprised by the Trump victory” Bergman said in an interview with The Daily. “If you look at what happened in Britain, with this vote to leave the E.U. [European Union], [it’s] a very similar phenomenon, and if you look at what’s happening all over Europe, [...] we are seeing a rise in political polarization to the right and to the left.”

Bergman has previously spoke to The Daily about the “crisis of capitalism,” but following the results of this election, he seemed even more convinced that now is the time for a fundamental change in the system.

Attendees discuss how to “defeat Trump.”

“This is the least popular president in the history of the country, and he hasn’t even been inaugurated yet,” he said.

“I think that the only way to fight this sort of division that [Trump] uses, his language that he uses [which] is very similar to scapegoating, [...] is with solidarity,” Kian Kenyon-Dean, a member of Socialist Fightback, told The Daily. “You can’t fight capitalism with capitalism, you can’t fight fire with fire; you fight fire with water. You fight division with solidarity, [and] you fight capitalism with socialism.”

Kenyon-Dean went on to explain that in many ways, Trump’s election seems to have been a wake-up call for people.

“The fact is that Trump getting elected has radicalized people to the left and to the right, and we can’t just sit around and mope,” he explained. “It may be a cliche, [but] it’s a good one: it’s a famous quote, ‘don’t mourn, organize,’ and that’s what we need to do now. We need to present an actual alternative.”

Speaking to The Daily, Julien Arseneau, a member of Fightback and one of the event’s organizers, said: “We can’t ignore the background of economic collapse in the U.S.. In 2008 the big banks were saved when hundreds of billions of dollars were pumped into the banking system [...] but interestingly when the poor Americans lose their houses, lose their jobs, nobody is

there to help them and they [the government] say ‘we don’t have money,’ but then [they] have $700 billion for the banks.”

“I think that the only way to fight this sort of division that he [Trump] uses, his language [which] is very similar to scapegoating, [...] is with solidarity.

You can’t fight capitalism with capitalism, you can’t fight fire with fire; you fight fire with water.

You fight division with solidarity.”

—Kian Kenyon-Dean Socialist Fightback member “I think Americans were desperately seeking an alternative to the

Ryan Canon | The McGill Daily status quo, and unfortunately in this election, the only seemingly different thing from the status quo was Donald Trump,” Arseneau added.

This was a common theme amongst the attendees, as the consensus seemed to be that it was Americans’ frustration with the system that led to their new president-elect. Many attendees also felt the opposition to Trump needed to stop labeling his supporters as racist or misogynist, and rather call them what they are: people who feel frustrated and disenfranchised.

However, discussion showed that there was no unanimous agreement on how to approach resisting president-elect Trump.

One attendee, who did not identify himself, spoke on the issue of systemic change: “We are a system, and a system cannot change if there is resistance.”

“Resistance is what we are doing, in our efforts to dismantle Trump and his claim to the presidency and not accepting it, is resistance on our part. Therefore, instead of fighting to bring him down, why don’t we try to come up with solutions?

Why don’t we force legislation to be passed?” he asked the crowd.

“Just protesting, talking, and complaining doesn’t offer a solution, and in fact it might appear to make him seem the better person.

It makes him become the victim of something that is considered negative in society,” he continued.

“I am not saying it is wrong to protest, I am just saying we need to have a smart approach,” he added.

“I think Americans were desperately seeking an alternative to the status quo, and unfortunately in this election, the only seemingly different thing from the status quo was Donald Trump.”

—Julien Arseneau Socialist Fightback member Though his idea was not shared by all in the room, as the general opinion called for the complete removal of the capitalist system, the point that he made seemed to hit home.

“We need more than just protests, we need to actually put forward something positive that we do want,” Bergman told The Daily.

“Eventually, with no direction, people get tired and go home, so there needs to be a real movement.”

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News

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Issues with the penal system Concordia event discusses the “true impact of punishment”

Nora McCready News Writer

O

n Wednesday, November 16, approximately thirty people gathered at L’Artere Coop at a talk called “What is the true impact of punishment?” The goal of the event, according to the Facebook page, was to “consider the impact of a punishment approach and the sorts of community-based and dialog-based alternatives that some would propose to it,” and question whether incarceration truly results in perpetrators changing their ways.

The event was organised by the University of the Streets Cafe, “which aims to create welcoming spaces where diverse groups of citizens can gather to share their unique experiences and perspectives.” The Cafe is affiliated with the Office of Community Engagement at Concordia.

“Every time it’s a different theme and we try to keep them as informal as possible,” said Emma Harake, one of the University of Streets Cafe volunteers, describing the program’s discussions. “We always have a guest or two guests, depending on the topic, and someone to moderate the talk. [...] Every theme also attracts different people, different age groups, different communities in the city which is very interesting to see.”

The guests that night included Jean-Marc Bougie, who was incarcerated for four years for “an economic crime,” and is now involved in his community as a meal delivery volunteer and “assists isolated and socially excluded individuals in filing tax forms and similar documents,” as well as Marie Beemans, a supporter of prisoners’ rights and an advocate for prison reform.

Between 1983 and 1986, Beemans coordinated the national campaign against the return of the death penalty. For more than twenty years, she has opened her home to federal prisoners in transition.

What is wrong with the system?

Bougie thinks that the Canadian penal system is still based on the concept of ‘an eye for an eye.’

‘‘‘An eye for an eye’ is engrained in our nature as humans,” said Bougie. “It flows in our bodies, it flows in our culture, it flows from our religion.”

However, Bougie went beyond that, saying that Canada’s penal system is still deeply flawed and needs to be reformed, especially in regards to incarceration and actual rehabilitation.

“Who here would go to a hospital where there is a big sign out front that says ‘50 per cent of you are going to get worse’?” he asked.

“When you send someone to the penitentiary, it’s the same thing.

The recidivism rate in Canada and the United States varies [...] between 40 and 62 per cent.”

“Who here would go to a hospital where there is a big sign out front that says ‘50 per cent of you are going to get worse?’

When you send someone to the penitentiary, it’s the same thing.”

—Jean-Marc Bougie Guest speaker Beemans further raised concerns about the state’s role in setting an example for its citizens regarding punishment.

“Where there is the death penalty, there is a higher homicide rate,” she explained, “because the citizen uses the same excuse as the state: ‘If the state can get rid of somebody because they are unac-

ceptable, so can an individual.’”

Beemans explained that the same logic can be used for lesser crimes, saying that where a state seeks vengeance against its citizens, the individual feels more comfortable in fulfilling personal vendettas.

Beemans continued with additional criticism of the system, specifically with regards to its failure to provide a constructive environment where criminals can reform: “You take somebody who has acted irresponsibly, and you put them in a situation where you take away all the responsibility: what time he gets up in the morning, what time he eats [...] that’s reinforcing behavior.”

Why is the system so flawed?

As the night went on, attendees were invited to identify reasons why the current penal system often fails inmates.

“We hear of models that are more like [the system in Norway] that seem to work better,” said one attendee named Fiona. “The rates of recidivism are much lower than the ones in North America.”

“What’s the motivation for governments not to do it this way?” she continued. “[It’s because] in the U.S. a lot of these prisons are privatized, so there is a profit motive to maintain punishment as the method for attempted reformation.”

Another attendee named Laura argued that the people who maintain the current penal system have no real interest in rehabilitation.

“There’s a very real struggle for power, and struggle for control over people that society deems ‘lower-class’” she said. “They’re trying to keep that [hierarchical] system in place, especially if you look at the disproportionate inmate representation in prison, like people of colour and Indigenous folks.”

“Trying to integrate them back into society is not their intention; their intention is to keep them outside of society,” she concluded.

Bougie concurred with the idea that prisons oftentimes are used as tools to maintain racial and economic hierarchies, based on his own experiences in prison.

“Most of the people knew two or three guys in the pen [prison] when they came in,” he recalled.

“Where did they first meet?

Shawbridge, St. Viateur [youth detention centers].”

“Where there is the death penalty, there is a higher homicide rate because the citizen uses the same excuse as the state: ‘If the state can get rid of somebody because they are unnaceptable, so can an individual.’”

—Marie Beemans Advocate for prison reform “They knew each other in the juvenile system,” he continued.

“When they hit eighteen, they met up at Bordeaux [another correctional facility], and when they graduated from there, they met each other in the pen. They were like family.”

Bougie brought this up to show that this is just one example of a societal pattern in which the incarcerated become lifelong members of communities considered “outcast” by society: the majority of incarcerated individuals live in a world where everyone has either been directly or indirectly affected by the penal system.

Bougie suggested that society is failing these communities

by continually putting them in situations that deny their individual worth and the worth of their peers.

Where do we go from here?

The speakers and attendees focused their discussion on compassion as a possible solution the issue of incarceration in Canada.

One attendee referenced a study conducted in Australia that illustrated the power of sympathetic understanding in the penal system. “[The general public] thinks that sentences are too lenient and people should be punished more, [...] [but this study] discussed with [individual] jurors the cases that they had sat in and made decisions on,” the attendee said.

“In those cases, [jurors] were privy to [...] all of the nuances and circumstances [of the crime, and] they thought [...] the sentence was fine.”

The attendee said this illustrates how hard it is to be sympathetic toward a criminal you know nothing about: if you see that person as a human being, you might be able to recognize the potential cruelty of their punishment.

Near the end of the night’s discussion, Beemans shared a personal story: “Years ago I used to go to Macaza, which is a penitentiary for prisoners you can’t put in other prisons,” she said. “Many of the guys that are there have been in [for] thirty, forty years.

“There’s 270 prisoners and never more than 15 have visits,” she continued. “So I said I’ll bring a busload of volunteers and I’ll fill the chapel [...] and we can fill it with guys who never have a visit.”

“These are guys who have committed the type of crime that you say is horrifying,” she pointed out.

“Most of them [have] been in the system since they were little kids.

Most of them will never get out.”

However, Beemans said this doesn’t mean they weren’t capable of an emotional connection.

“They’re still human beings and we’re their only contact with the outside world. And tears fall, you see tears at the end of [our visit],” she said.

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November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Mass incarceration and slavery

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13TH explores the many forms systemic racism has taken in the US

Mairna Cupido The McGill Daily

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n Tuesday, November 15, roughly thirty students gathered for a screening of Ava DuVernay’s critically-acclaimed documentary 13TH, and an accompanying panel discussion, organized by the McGill chapter of Journalists for Human Rights (JHR).

13TH The film draws its name from the thirteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” This loophole, of which many are completely unaware, allows those incarcerated in the U.S. – nearly one per cent of the country’s population – to be forced to work while in prison, often in poor conditions, doing everything from sewing McDonald’s uniforms to farming products sold in Whole Foods.

These people earn wages ranging from a little over a dollar an hour to, in states like Texas, nothing at all.

Moreover, the population that is subjected to what is, in effect, a modern and state-sanctioned form of slavery, is disproportionately non-white. According to The Sentencing Project, “racial minorities are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences.”

As a result of this, over sixty per cent of those incarcerated in the U.S. are Black, Indigenous, and/or people of colour (BIPOC), while this group makes up roughly only a third of the country’s overall population. Black Americans, in particular, have been systematically targeted through the prison-industrial complex. If current trends continue, one third of the Black men born in the U.S.. today can expect to be incarcerated in their lifetimes.

In 13TH, DuVernay contextualizes this situation, revealing a pattern of institutionalized discrimination against Black Americans which stretches back centuries.

When slavery was banned in the U.S. – with the notable exception of prison labour – there followed a series of measures which entrenched racial inequalities: explicit segregation in the American South was in place by the beginning of the 20th century, and Black voters were systematically disenfranchised through both legislation and actual violence.

During this period, the documentary explains, the “mythology of Black criminality” was deliberately popularized, with films like the infamously racist Birth of a Nation portraying Black men as violent, sexually predatory, and subhuman.

The U.S. prison industrial complex has become a tool of racial oppression.

These tropes persisted, allowing Civil Rights activists to be labelled as criminals by the media of their day.

Though the Civil Rights movement and the legislation it precipitated brought about historic changes to the status of Black Americans, and acknowledged wrongdoing on behalf of the country’s white elites, an era of mass incarceration soon began.

“Racial minorities are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences.”

—The Sentencing Project

Beginning with Nixon, whose “tough on crime” stance provided him with an excuse for brutally repressing anti-war and Black Power activists, successive administrations outdid one another in lengthening minimum sentences, increasing police funding, and expanding the country’s prison system.

The “War on Drugs,” also beginning under the Nixon administration, saw a massive spike in the number of BIPOC – particularly Black and Latino men – in prison, as discriminatory legislation allowed class and race-based divides to be further entrenched.

For example, possession of cocaine, the drug of the wealthy, was penalized far more gently than possession of crack, a cheaper, smokeable form of the same substance.

In short, slavery gave way to segregation, which in turn gave way to an unprecedented system of mass incarceration which has devastated Black communities: the method of state-sanctioned control and oppression has evolved, but the underlying current of racially-motivated violence and hatred has remained constant.

This, in essence, is the core message of 13TH, which DuVernay conveys through powerful visuals, historical footage, graphics and statistics, and a series of interviews with scholars, activists, and politicians, from Newt Gingrich to Angela Davis.

The panel After watching the first hour of the film together, the students at Tuesday’s JHR event participated in an interactive panel discussion with four speakers: Fanta Kamara, a McGill student and Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporter; Will Prosper, founder of the anti-racist collective Montréal-Nord Républik, and two McGill professors with academic expertise in systemic racism in the U.S., Leonard Moore and Jan Doering.

Marina Djudjevic | The McGill Daily

Despite their lack of first-hand experience of racial discrimination, Moore and Doering, both white men, spoke for substantially more than half the time devoted to the panel.

In terms of subject matter, the discussion covered a variety of topics, sometimes only tangentially related to the matter at hand – prison labour and mass incarceration.

Many of the questions centered around the recent U.S. election, in which the overtly racist and otherwise bigoted Donald Trump won the presidency with a largely white support base.

While many of those participating in the discussion focused on the future of civil rights under Trump’s administration, Prosper reminded the group that the issues at hand existed long before the 2016 election, and that Canadians are also complicit in systemic racism.

“A lot of people are mentioning that, you know, now [...] we feel threatened by Donald Trump,” said Prosper. “I just wonder why that threat was not there before.

It should have been there before, even with Barack Obama, because these things have been going on for a long time.”

“We also have to take a look over here in Canada, because a lot of the time we always compare to our neighbor,” he continued, “but the number of Black people being incarcerated right now in the past ten years in Canada, it’s [...] growing at a faster pace than it is growing in the United States.”

Prosper also said progressives shouldn’t idealize Obama and his legacy.

“Black Lives Matter, they came under Barack Obama, [and the movement] was born at that time for a reason, because Black people were getting killed by police officers all the time,” Proper pointed out. “In the economic sectors in the United States, there was more money invested in Black entrepreneurship during the years of Bush than during the years of Barack Obama. [...]

If we’d fought against racism before Trump came up, maybe people would not have voted for [him].”

In an interview with the The Daily after the event, Prosper, whose work largely centers around police brutality, elaborated on local manifestations of state-sanctioned oppression of Black people.

“As Canadians, we feel like we’re so much better, and we don’t see it as a problem,” he said. “But the facts in Montreal [are that] as a Black person, you are more likely to be [accosted] by a police officer than the average in the United States. [...] A Black man is seven times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana here in Montreal.”

Prosper went on to mention racial disparities in income, in the likelihood of being hired, in police presence per neighbourhood, and various other statistics attesting to existing systemic inequalities in Canada. Crucially, he said, “we can do better.”

According to Prosper, it’s not enough to be better than the U.S., we must hold our own governments, at the municipal, local, and national level, to a much higher standard rather than remaining complacent.

Commentary

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Minority vs. minority means whiteness still wins

Isabelle Shi Commentary Writer

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The model minority myth is a tool of anti-Blackness

he invisibility of Asians in mainstream discourse, the so-called “positive” stereotypes we are bombarded with every day, the rampant anti-Blackness found in Asian communities — these issues have gone unaddressed long enough. We, as a society, need to start talking about them, but to do that we must first address what all of these problems are irretrievably linked to the model minority myth. The model minority myth applies specifically to east and south Asians, who are the ones westerners usually have in mind when they use the word ‘Asian.’ The myth goes like this: through hard work, Asians managed to overcome barriers of race, and have become productive, integrated members of society. You’ve probably heard or assumed variants of this story before. It’s the source of many stereotypes imposed on Asian people — that we’re hard-working, quiet, intelligent, disciplined. Why is this a bad thing?

First of all, the myth didn’t exactly arise naturally: it was crafted by white people for a reason.

You see, though the narrative is about Asians, we aren’t the original intended ‘target’ of the myth. No, the main use of this narrative is to create a contrast between Asians as a group and other people of colour — namely, Black people. There’s a reason the popular perception of Asians went from ‘untrustworthy foreigner’ to ‘diligent math whiz.’

The fact that many of the most prominent stereotypes about Black people seem like utter ‘opposites’ of contemporary Asian stereotypes is no coincidence. Asians, it is argued, managed to climb up the societal ladder and carve a place for ourselves in western society without resorting to political means. Essentially, we managed to ‘overcome racism’ by ducking our heads docilely and working hard, instead of through protests and demonstrations. “Look at the Asians,” people say, “they don’t cause a stir, they don’t complain, they’re doing it right.” The root of the model minority myth is backlash against Black struggles for equality. By casting Asians as the “model” minority, Black people are subtly set apart and vilified — and programs like affirmative action are regarded with doubt and suspicion.

The myth is so deeply grained in our mentalities that when you try to point out that the taciturn, book-smart Asian is a tired stereotype, people quickly laugh it off as a ‘positive’ stereotype. “It doesn’t hurt anyone,” they always say. “Actually, shouldn’t you be happy? It’s a com-

pliment. What are you complaining about?” If you’re an Asian living in North America, you’ve probably been confronted countless times with this sort of rhetoric. The truth of the matter is that there is no such thing as a positive stereotype.

Stereotypes, by their very nature, cannot be anything but dehumanizing. The model minority myth claims that Asians collectively conform to a certain standard — and for the most part, people believe it. The ‘positive’ nature of these stereotypes makes it much easier to buy into them, and thus more pervasive.

Try being Asian and having people find out you got a bad grade on a math exam — you can expect comments about it. And if you’re Asian, people will automatically assume you study science or engineering, ‘hard’ disciplines that fit popular ideas of what intelligence means.

No stereotype can be good. By making Asians out to be inhumanly hardworking and intelligent, you are putting a tremendous amount of stress on anyone who fails to meet those irrationally exacting standards.

So many Asians feel like they’re ‘fake’ or defective because they can’t do what all their classmates think they should be able to do. Of course, on the other hand, Asians who do excel in school have their effort completely invalidated. “You did well because you’re Asian,” is what they’re told.

All their hard work is dismissed because they’re believed to be naturally smart, but when they say they studied for ten hours for an exam, it’s also dismissed as just typical Asian behaviour. Making us out to be superhumanly smart does us no favours: it just means we’ll never be seen as ‘normal.’

“Look at the Asians,” people say, “they don’t cause a stir, they don’t complain, they’re doing it right.”

That’s the thing about the model minority myth. It might assign all these ‘positive’ traits to Asians, but that doesn’t mean it actually helps us integrate into society. But our lack of visibility runs especially deep. Ever notice how little Asian-specific issues are talked about, even in forums where race issues are frequently discussed?

Ever notice how little representation Asians actually get, and how

Kismet Bandeen| Illustrator often our stories are outright whitewashed, in 2016? Diversity in media has been slowly but steadily improving in recent years, but at a slower pace for Asians. This is another key feature of the model minority myth: it erases our experiences due to our supposed freedom from oppression, and by doing so, also conceals any inequity that Asians do face.

The narrative is that Asians have already achieved economic and social equality through hard work — as though all Asians are now middle class or wealthy. This is not true.

In the U.S., 15 per cent of the Asian immigrant population continues to live under the federal poverty line — but these people are now invisible in the public imagination, because they don’t fit the stereotypes. And racial microaggressions directed towards us are waved off as ‘just jokes’ (in the best case scenario) or hurtful barbs somehow meant to be taken as ‘compliments’ (in the worst case scenario). So many people hold the implicit assumption that just because Asians have certain privileges that other people of colour don’t, we don’t face any problems at all.

It’s true that Asians are less likely to face explicit racism and systematic violence than Indigenous, Black, or brown people, especially in places like the U.S. But that isn’t due to any kind of goodwill directed towards us. In the so-called ‘racial hierarchy’ created and perpetuated by white people, we’re considered the ‘in-between’ race: not white, which would be ideal, but not as ‘bad’ as others on the bottom of the

ladder — again, Indigenous, Black, and brown people.

Moreover, the blatant antiBlackness in Asian communities is often exploited by white leaders to help keep these other groups down.

The model minority myth is stealthy but vicious: it pits minority against minority, marginalized against marginalized. But that doesn’t mean the power dynamics are equal. The amount of casual anti-Blackness in Asian communities is more than obvious. If you’re Asian, you’ve very likely heard at least one parent or family member say inexcusable things about Black people.

Asian cultures have their own sets of endemic problems, which sometimes overlap in unfortunate ways with Western racism. For instance, if you’re an Asian woman with fair skin, you probably can’t count the number of times relatives or family friends have complimented you on how pale you are. I’ve personally never come across an Asian skincare product that didn’t market itself as skin-lightening. East Asians also tend to look down on Southeast Asians with darker skin.

This can’t all be attributed to the model minority myth, and even if it could be, it wouldn’t justify it.

Asian communities here in the West need to own up to their anti-Blackness and rectify it. As the buffer group, we ultimately have a choice in front of us: acknowledge and attempt to shed the model minority myth (which many Asians have unfortunately internalized by now), and stand with other people of colour, or continue to be used to

oppress those people. The choice should be obvious — but many aren’t at all aware of the dynamics in play here, and don’t know that there is a choice to make at all.

Given recent developments in the U.S., this needs to change — not only there, but also here in Canada, and everywhere else. Racism affects us all. But before we can overcome it, we need to unearth and expose all of these unpleasant power currents running under the surface of our society. Because whether you’re aware of them or not, they exist.

Bottom line is: the perpetuation of the Asian model minority myth serves as a convenient vehicle for the continued dissemination of anti-Black messages. It also deeply hurts us Asians. It’s time that people stopped believing in it. It’s important to realize that while our invisibility and our role as the ‘model minority’ has been hurtful to us, it’s also offered us a limited degree of protection that indigenous, Black and brown people simply don’t have. Rather than continue to be indifferent, we need to take a stand and make it clear that we will not be used. Racism is a common enemy that simply manifests differently for different groups. We need to overcome our divisions, acknowledge our position, and work together if we want to defeat it. With a Trump presidency on the horizon, this is more important now than ever.

Isabelle Shi is a U1 political science student. To contact the author, email isabelle.shi@mail.mcgill.ca.

COMMENTARY

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Remembrance is political

NDP McGill Commentary Writers

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very year, the three main partisan campus clubs at McGill - NDP, Liberal, and Conservative McGill - collaborate to sell poppies and raise awareness about Remembrance Day. This year, New Democrats at McGill voted to sell white poppies, alongside supporting the traditional red poppy campaign.

The white poppy was introduced by the mothers and wives of dead soldiers in the 1930s, and demands that no more loved ones die in wars that serve political interests while inflicting harm upon civilians. It has become a symbol of remembrance for the civilian victims of war, who make up the majority of war deaths in every major conflict. Pacifists have adopted the symbol as well: the white poppy acknowledges that romanticizing conflict is dangerous, and attempts to reflect the very real horror experienced - by veterans and civilians alike - in times of armed conflict. In Montreal, white poppies are made by a local pacifist organization that seeks to prevent Canada’s involvement in future wars.

We were initially pleased when Liberal McGill and Conservative McGill agreed that we

9

But it shouldn’t be partisan

could sell both red and white poppies, either with them at their table or at a table next to them.

Then, quite suddenly, they told us we would no longer be welcome unless we agreed to not sell white poppies. Although taken aback, we decided it was more important to engage in a dialogue with students about war than to blindly give in to the other clubs’ demands. Students and professors were very open to hearing the story of the white poppy, and in the process we raised important funds for both the Legion and pacifist activists.

This poppy conflict is not what’s important. We are concerned, however, that Liberals and Conservatives on campus are ignorant of the political aspects of war. In a contemporary context, going to war is a political choice, and the death and destruction that follows inevitably impacts the young and vulnerable the most. There is no contradiction in honouring those who fought bravely for what they believed in and demanding with all of our will that nobody die unnecessarily in the future. Remembrance should remind us of the repugnance of war and not inspire within us the desire to fight.

In light of the fact that Liberal and Conservative McGill chose

Marina Djurdjevic | The McGill Daily to make remembrance a partisan issue this year, it is important to acknowledge that Liberal and Conservative governments have done a great disservice to veterans. Stephen Harper fought veterans in court for years, arguing that Canadians owed them no legal duty to provide for their well-being. Justin Trudeau has taken up that battle and continues to fight

Do you have a response to something that The Daily publishes?

veterans. Veterans’ lawyers have said of the Liberal government’s actions: “[t]hey have turned the Liberal election campaign into a lie.” Two of the first broken promises of the Liberal government came when it refused to reinstate lifelong pensions for veterans and reneged on its commitment to add $80 million in funding to veteran higher education.

Perhaps, this year, Liberals and Conservatives should reflect on remembrance and stop their betrayal of both former soldiers and those advocating to keep them safe.

NDP McGill is an on-campus partisan student group. To contact them, go to www.facebook.com/ NDPMcGill.

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Commentary

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Unbridled authoritarianism in India’s military

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India’s internal military power remains unchecked under current legislation Rahul Datta The McGill Daily

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n the night of February 23, 1991, a small village in Kashmir changed forever.

Masquerading as a “search and cordon operation to catch insurgents,” 125 Indian soldiers laid siege to the twin villages of Konan and Poshpora. Using the most potent and despicable tools of oppression in political conflict, they proceeded to rape and assault anywhere between 23 to 100 women between the ages of 13 and sixty.

There are numerous documented accounts of the Indian army committing heinous crimes against the residents of the North Eastern states of India, under the protection of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). It allows them to shoot to kill, arrest on tenuous pretext, conduct warrantless searches, and demolish structures in the name of “restoring public order.” There is also a provision that precludes trials against any officer for an act that is protected within the confines of the AFSPA. To say that these regulations, which are active in the northeast in “curbing insurgencies,” have fostered resentment towards the central government would be a gross understatement.

It’s high time the AFSPA got fully repealed, given the scores of people dead, raped and tortured as a result of military abuse of power. The central government and army have deluded themselves into believing violence doesn’t beget more violence. When the AFSPA was enacted in the state of Manipur, there were five militant insurgencies in existence –but today, more than fifty years later, there are more than 35.

The AFSPA’s roots can be traced back to a British mandate enacted in 1942 to suppress Gandhi’s Quit India Movement, which was a civil disobedience movement demanding the end of British rule in India.

The human loss was dire: 2,500 were murdered in police shootings during protests, tens of thousands were arrested, and protesters were flogged and tortured. While the Quit India Movement was crushed by the British, AFSPA was resuscitated in 1958 in response to a militant secessionist movement occurring in Nagaland, a state in the northeast of India. Echoing former colonialists, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru declared, “No infirm government can function anywhere. Where there is violence, it has to be dealt with by government, whatever the reason for it may be.”

Since the partition of India, Pakistan, and modern Bangladesh,

Marina Djurdjevic | The McGill Daily the way in which the central government has subjugated areas like Nagaland, Manipur, and most famously, Kashmir, represents what one may perceive to be tragic irony. The East India Company, and then the British Crown, ruled over the subcontinent with impunity, to satiate the hunger of the empire. Now we have the central Indian government exercising similarly brutal authority over these ethnically heterogeneous areas to support the image of a ‘modern’ state.

When the AFSPA was enacted in the state of Manipur, there were five militant insurgencies in existence – but today, more than fifty years later, there are more than 35.

Countless forms of protest demanding its revocation have mostly fallen on deaf ears, but those that were received became iconic.

Irom Sharmila, an activist and poet from the state of Manipur, went on the world’s longest hunger strike demanding the repeal of the draconian law in her home state, after ten people were killed in a massacre in the city of Imphal.

The strike lasted 16 years, 13 of which were spent in solitary confinement after the police charged her with attempt to commit suicide — a crime that carries up to a year in prison. She was released upon the completion of her sentence, but resumed her fast and caused her health to deteriorate.

This once again warranted an arrest that landed her up in a hospitalprison, where she was force fed a liquid diet.

Sharmila ended her fast in August of this year, breaking her promise of only ending it once the law was repealed. She now wants to run for Chief Minister of Manipur, to make positive changes.

Such resolve is rare, and may unfortunately only be born out of circumstances so horrible that living through them requires the extraordinary — Irom Sharmila is not the only instance of such valour.

On July 15, 2004, 12 mothers from a village in Manipur stripped themselves naked outside a military base, holding a banner stating, “Indian Army Rape Us.” Incensed by the murder of Thangjam Manorama Devi three days earlier, who was found bullet-riddled and semen-stained in a field, these women triggered massive protests across the state.

Despite widespread discontent and protest, the AFSPA still remains in effect in Manipur.

The British Crown, ruled over the subcontinent with impunity [...]

Now we have the central Indian government exercising similarly brutal authority over these ethnically heterogeneous areas to support the image of a ‘modern’ state.

Surprisingly, there is a shred of hope. Last year the act was withdrawn in the state of Tripura after officials noticed a decline in terrorist activities. Slowly restricting the amount of police presence in congruence with the decline in insurgent activity ultimately built

up to the state government deciding to withdraw the act. It was also withdrawn from Punjab in 2008 after secessionist movements there were quelled.

Assessing the effectiveness of AFSPA is difficult as it has yielded varying results. What can definitely be ascertained is how it has granted far too much power to the military, allowing them to counterproductively strip the rights of citizens across states in which it exists. At this stage in the cycle of violence, there may be signs of secessionist movements letting up, but the inhumanity of the Indian military in some of their actions sow the seeds for future calls for separation.

While India is home to abundant talents and wonders, when it comes to human rights you can’t kid yourself. In a land where poverty is widespread and a woman is reportedly raped every 15 minutes, one cannot say that India has a squeaky clean human rights record.

Sure, the concept itself is a utilitarian delusion that western countries have propagated for their own end goals, but there comes a point where you realize that upwards of 50,000 people have died or ‘disappeared’ because of the unchecked privilege bestowed upon the army.

How many more dead, tortured or raped human beings does it take?

How many more record breaking hunger strikes? How many more naked mothers?

To contact the author, email rahul.datta@mail.mcgill.ca.

Cover by Kevin Tam Borders by Marina Djudjervic

The “Body” Special Issue

WELCOME TO THE DAILY’S SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE BODY W

e traverse the world through our bodies and the world reacts to us through our physicality, whether we like it or not. So many experiences have to do with our bodies – violence, trauma, but also joy, happiness, the way we first encounter the world and how the world encounters us. Our bodies are central to everything that happens to us. We believe that our physicality affects our intersections with the world, and shapes our lives. The body is also a vessel that holds more than our present experiences – our pasts, our histories as people, the broader framework of everything that’s happened before us. We seldom realize that about each other. Our bodies show signs of that history, whether through skin colour, the way we carry ourselves, the way we choose to act, and the way we go through the world. Everyone moves through life because of the histories that they carry in their bodies, and this special issue is an attempt to give justice to this idea.

Table of Contents On navigating culture: between home and society An interview with the Prisoner Correspondence Project How spaces embody trauma Self-portrait spread On being caramel and queer Walking through rooms On being Korean-Canadian On battling an eating disorder, recovery, and life today Artwork & poetry

page 3 page 4 page 5 pages 6 & 7 page 8 page 9 page 10 page 11 page 12

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LIMINAL On navigating culture: between home and society

By J. Laraqi

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ou always felt you grew up fighting an invisible war.

Sometimes, you look into the faces of friends and acquaintances and see strangers looking back at you. This war is you against everyone: friends, family, strangers. With your back to the wall, you can only rely on yourself. Your friends are for fairer weather, there to share only the good times – and even those can turn sour. Even the best of their intentions can cause harm, and no one knows which words and actions bite into you and hurt. You never feel comfortable enough to tell them where the tripwires are.

As a woman in your culture, you are expected to be subservient above all: obedient to your father, and eventually your husband. In your immediate family, you’ve been punished countless times for ‘backtalk’ – for trying to have a conversation, reaching out to say, I can’t do this, I need someone to understand me. Today, you rarely express clear anger and frustration at anyone because you are so afraid of the consequences. All you ever wanted was for your parents to understand you, but every attempt was read as insubordination and ill manners, because you are just a girl.

You don’t even belong to your family; you belong to your future husband’s family. After all, you are the only one able to eat the offerings when your family celebrates the dead– you do not belong.

When you were eight years old and the new student again, you wanted to fit in and be like everyone else, but you were far too timid and aware of your otherness. You were quiet and hesitant–a good student simply because you couldn’t afford to be subpar. There were too many expectations laid on you. Every joke made about smart Asians and Indian nerds rubbed you raw. Every time you heard the phrase ‘under God’ in their pledge, you clenched your teeth – their God does not belong to you.

You were excruciatingly polite, wellspoken and well-behaved, because if you were anything else, there would be consequences.

Perhaps it is easier for others in similar situations, but for you it has always been a struggle. Your classmates turned their noses up at your ethnic food, colourful, flavourful, completely vegetarian, nothing like their peanut butter and jelly sand-

wiches, pizzas, burgers. They stared at you when you wouldn’t change with them in the locker rooms. They sounded out your name and mangled all the syllables, took a beautiful name and made it rough and ugly.

You didn’t celebrate Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter, and you worshipped multiple gods all quite unlike the omniscient Christian God most of your classmates believed in. You went to temple instead of church. To the fury of your parents, by high school, you refused to wear a kumkum bindi on your forehead. After all, the red dye stained, and it was such a pain to explain the next day when someone inevitably asked. When they found out why, your parents said so what, said let them stare, said why do you concern yourself with their opinions?

Your skin has never been quite that tough; you have always been aware of scrutiny. It would have been one thing too many. You grew up needing to ask your parents for everything: spending money, permission to go out with a friend, to pursue extracurriculars, to do anything that involved leaving the house.

This is worlds away from how they treat your brother. He never fears punishment as severe as yours; he has never had as many restrictions placed on him. He is coddled, he grows wild. Neither your mother nor your father can control him, young, impetuous teenager that he is, and this is okay. You cannot even imagine what it would be like were you even half as rebellious as he. He still has some rules to obey, but they are tethers rather than chains.He is not held to the same standards in anything – you have to work twice as hard to earn half the praise, and all praise you earn is faintly damning.

You will never be enough, while he is enough simply by virtue of his being.

Your parents are not known for being fair, and when you lash out under the weight of injustice, they turn it back on you and make it your fault. Let the weight of blame be yours as well.

Once, you used to fight them for being overly authoritative. They claimed you only thought that because you compared yourself to Westerners, whose parents do not care about what their children do.

You were not allowed to go out with friends near exams or tests. You were rarely allowed to go to sleepovers, and then only with friends you’d known for years. Your father spat out

the word ‘love marriage’ like it was a curse. You know without ever explicitly talking about it that you aren’t allowed to date, let alone anything further. You aren’t allowed to pick your husband or your job or your classes.

However much you don’t really belong to your family, you still belong to them enough that they feel justified in controlling the greater portion of your life. It makes a difference when everyone you know is free to make their own choices, and you must always consider what your parents will say. Your life must be one of quiet rebellion, nothing so obvious that they can pick up on it.

And now your tan is ‘exotic’, people keep asking you about your food, and celebrities appropriate your traditions and make them something desirable, but not for you. The ‘true’ Indians shun you, subtly, because they think you are too Westernized. As for the Westerners, they don’t shun you, but there’s always a sense, after some time, that you’ve misstepped. You’ve done something that they don’t consider normal, and you remember, again, that there is a huge gulf separating the two of you. And always, always, there will come a time when some of the people around you will treat you as an example, as their opportunity to learn. They will consider you the foremost authority on everything about Indians. They will ask you about your culture, but they don’t really want to learn. They just want to feel good about themselves for asking, for seeming ‘multicultural’ and accepting. There is always a thin veneer of distaste and disgust; they will not say it to your face, but they think you barbaric as you try to make them understand even a fraction of where and what you came from.

All you want is to be left alone.

All you want is to be just another face in the crowd. You do not want to be who you are, a damn good actress and a liar; someone who bends to the point of breaking and still does not break. You want to wash the other off your skin. Even here, in a place filled with all sorts of people, you spend a lot of time unbalanced, unsure of how you fit. There is no helping the disparate, and the road to acceptance is littered with pitfalls. You may be able to cast off your family one day– but you cannot cast away the past, so you must resign yourself to it. Accept yourself, and don’t. You will only ever exist in contradiction.

4 QUEER BODIES BEHIND BARS The Prisoner Correspondence Project talks LGBTQ+ communities

By Marina Cupido and Saima Desai

Content warning: violence, sexual assault, transmisogyny

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here is arguably no place wherein bodies are regulated quite as aggressively as a prison. Society sanctions, or even encourages, violence against bodies we deem to be ‘criminal’ or ‘dangerous’ – by virtue of their actions, or sometimes just their skin colour. In prison, this violence looks like isolation from friends and family, mandatory underpaid labour, physical brutality, and sexual assault. For many incarcerated LGBTQ+ people, it also looks like replacing one’s right to self-determination with a rigid gender binary, where one’s genitals are assumed to indicate one’s gender.

Imprisoned LGBTQ+ people face a higher risk of social isolation, sexual violence, HIV/AIDS, and lack of access to medical care or hormones. The Prisoner Correspondence Project (PCP) is a non-profit initiative based out of QPIRG Concordia, which pairs imprisoned LGBTQ+ people with LGBTQ+ penpals outside the prison system, to exchange letters. The McGill Daily spoke to Parker Finley, a collective member of the PCP, about queer communities, policing bodies, and Trudeau’s record on prison justice.

The McGill Daily (MD): Why is it important for queer people inside prisons to correspond with other queer people?

Parker Finley (PF): Prisons work by taking people’s bodies out of communities and putting them in a separate space from the world that they were in before. So the point of the PCP was to try and connect people with a sense of community that they wouldn’t have otherwise. The reason that we specifically reach out to LGBTQ+ people is that those are people who are in prison and maybe don’t have a queer community or a gay community or a trans community inside prison. It’s important for all queer people to have other queer people in their lives that they’re in touch with, just for support and to have someone who ‘gets’ some of the stuff.

MD: How could relatively privileged university students be a helpful support mechanism for imprisoned people?

PF: This is the beautiful thing about the fact that we pair people up because they both identify as [queer]. And yes, often our penpals on the outside are privileged uni-

versity students and often people on the inside are very much not that, but it is amazing that even that small sliver of some sort of commonality does give people enough to talk about, especially just in the beginning. For example, I started writing to my penpal, and then we spent two letters both talking about our coming out processes as teenagers, and our first few boyfriends.

Almost everything else about us is very, very different, but that gave us enough to start, and once you start this conversation with this stranger you just talk about what’s going on in your lives.

MD: What are the effects of removing queer folks from communi-

“Jail forces people into smaller and smaller boxes – physically and in terms of identity categories.”

—Parker Finley ties of other queer people?

PF: A lot of times, trans women get placed in men’s prisons, which puts them [at risk of] much more danger and abuse from fellow prisoners and also guards. And in those instances where trans women are in men’s prisons and they are in danger, they often put them in what’s called “administrative segregation,” which is the same practice as solitary confinement. It’s the same size of cell, and it’s the same regimen of 23 hours in there a day, with one hour of outside time. But in this case it’s for safety, it’s not as a punishment. But it’s the same box, so it’s punishing people for being placed in the wrong place – for their identity to not fit in the box that they’ve been placed in.

That’s what makes prison, often, an even more evil and torturous thing for people to go through. Because once you enter that space, they take away this part of you that you have been identifying with, in the outside world and your own community. They separate you from all your friends and all your people, and then tell you that your name isn’t your name, and your pronoun isn’t your pronoun, and you can’t wear what

you want to wear. The prison system not only separates bodies from their communities, but separates people’s understandings of their own bodies from themselves.

Jail forces people into smaller and smaller boxes – physically and in terms of identity categories. There has been a movement to push back against the policies around the placement of trans prisoners, but it’s always been within an unacknowledged framework of a binary. Usually the change in policies make it sound like “trans women can now go to women’s prisons and trans men can go to men’s prisons” but where does that leave people who are more fluidly in between those two things?

There are no prisons in Canada that have a mixed population.

MD: There’s this moral panic about men infiltrating women’s prisons, which echoes the bathroom debate – about whether trans women should be allowed to use women’s bathrooms. Can you speak to the parallels between these sorts of public/private spaces that regulate bodies and have this particularly intense worry about the wrong genitals being in the wrong space?

PF: Yes – it’s bathrooms, prisons, shelters. There is just something about there being certain places in the world where there is a separation between the two groups of people we [supposedly] have, and something about mixing those two groups terrifies people. And it also happens in places of intense vulnerability for people – perceived or real. So people feel vulnerable, so they want that space to be kept safe, and the thing they think keeps it safe is keeping it segregated.

MD: Can you speak to the intersections of race and LGBTQ+ prisoners? Does racism heighten the existing problems we’ve talked about, or does it introduce a new set of problems?

PF: Both. In the Canadian context, the over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples is outrageously awful. In Manitoba, [over] 70 per cent of prisoners in Manitoba prisons are Indigenous, whereas [Indigenous people are] only [15] per cent of the provincial population.

There’s also a huge over-incarceration of Black bodies in Canadian and especially [U.S.] prisons [...] and then obviously, there’s a lot

of racialized LGBTQ+ people in prison as well. The reason I say it does add to existing problems is people might find it even harder to find community, because maybe the only other LGBTQ+ people are white, and there’s that gap in understanding between each other.

Also for two-spirit people, maybe they aren’t able to find community with other trans prisoners.

MD: PCP encourages people to send porn or erotica – especially queer porn or erotica – to prisoners.

Where did that idea come from?

PF: Along with other things that prison tries to regulate in people’s lives, people’s sexualities is definitely one of them. Like, often prisoners aren’t allowed to have sex with each other. There was actually this law that got passed in the States over the past decade, that was called the Prison Rape Elimination Act, it’s a very famous piece of legislation that was aimed at reducing sexual assault rates in prison, but what it actually did was make prisoners having sex with each other illegal.

The argument that we’re putting forth is that people really need

“The prison system not only separates bodies from their communities, but separates people’s understandings of their own bodies from themselves.”

—Parker Finley access to sexuality, in order to have a healthy life. Especially in a time of being in prison, having access to your own sexuality and having access to sexual materials that are in line with your sexuality is so important, and something the prison really tries to keep away from you. And that’s why we’re trying to fill that in. We have a lot of written smut, because you often can’t send naked pictures, and we have some softcore stuff. It is a really important thing,

people find it therapeutic. It’s one of the things that people on the outside would take for granted – that once you go inside it becomes much harder to masturbate and have access to things that help you do that, that are in line with your sexuality.

MD: What is Trudeau’s record on prison justice, and does that signal a change in how imprisoned people will be allowed to express their gender identity?

PF: [Trudeau] has been recognized as this ally to the gay and trans community because he’s so open and friendly and whatever. But on the other hand, we’ve had one of the biggest cuts to frontline HIV/AIDS gay organizations and trans organizations in a long time, under the Liberal government. That’s what’s really frustrating – it’s so classic, people always make fun of the Liberals for “campaigning left, leading right.” But this is what they do – [Trudeau’s] such a photo-opper that he chooses these things that aren’t that controversial to push through to happen, but then on the other hand, cutting the resources to help people on the ground.

The good thing out of all that, though, is that with the addition of gender identity and expression to the hate crime legislation, that does give people a legal grounds to be able to sue the government on certain policies around placement of trans prisoners in prison. Like, in the federal system – which is everyone who has a sentence of over two years – people get placed based on their birth sex, but also taking into consideration whether they have a diagnosis of dysphoria. If they have a diagnosis and a couple letters, then a trans woman can be placed in a woman’s prison. But otherwise they’d get placed in a man’s prison.

Which, under the new hate crime legislation, is actually illegal. But it takes someone to do the suing and take it up to the court. Or, for that to happen and the government to change the policy. So it doesn’t just happen over night with adding that to the hate crime legislation – it just gives people the grounds to actually file a case.

Those wishing to get involved locally can contact the Prisoner Correspondence Project, Open Door Books, and Solidarity Across Borders. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

HOW SPACES EMBODY TRAUMA On occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold

By Sydney Lang I hold my trauma in my body.

It manifests itself in mental triggers and physical reactions, in winces and tightened muscles; it is the weight in my chest and on my shoulders.

It’s brought on by flashbacks and loud noises, men who interrupt me, walking down a street alone at night, talking about sexual assault and “justice” in class, alcohol.

It looks like bags under my eyes, anxiety, distraction, bailing on plans, staying in bed.

I’ve been struggling to understand it: how my trauma (or rather, my struggles with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)) impacts the ways that I navigate the world and how I interact with other people and different spaces.

At first, I tried to see it as something outside of myself – I refused to let it define me and refused to let it become a part of my identity. It was easier if I saw it as something I could carry; it was just another weight or burden I had to hold. Sure, I’d tell myself, it made simple tasks a little bit harder, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I’d ensure myself that this was not the real me and that soon enough I’d be back to my old self. Because if it wasn’t a part of me, then I would eventually be able to let it go.

I’ve spoken to others who negotiate and understand their trauma in different ways. Some repress their traumatic memories and force themselves (whether consciously or subconsciously) to forget. Others identify with their trauma personally and deeply; they seem to have a strong grasp on the ways that their own subjectivity has been informed by their trauma. They speak openly about mental health and identify as someone with PTSD, anxiety, depression; they identify as a survivor.

And of course, the ways that we experience our trauma are deeply informed and framed by our gender identity, race, sexual identity, nationality, citizenship, ability, class, and sense of identity in the society in which we live and the spaces that we occupy.

In fact, trauma is often a product of events and processes that are enabled and perpetuated by these same structures and systems, namely: racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, poverty, war, occupation, colonization, nationalism.

I was recently talking to a friend about a book he read for class. He

told me that in the book – an ethnography – the author describes the ways that ruins in postwar Cyprus hold the trauma of the community. I then began to question the ways that trauma and affect might exist outside of ourselves. It was not until this conversation that I realized how much my own understanding of trauma was based on myself: a self-reflexive, human-centric, interior understanding.

Affect – a non-conscious experience of intensity, distinguishable from emotion and feeling – has been understood in the social sciences as consisting of subjectivity, the self, and the energy that emerges from within. As per this analysis (often one founded on psychoanalysis), we come to see affect as something inherently personal and individual, something that is held within us.

the trauma of the community. The ruins hold an energy that is felt by the community and tourists alike. The ruins, and the energy they hold, are also used by the community, through abjective interpretations (understanding yourself in relation to the undesirable or grotesque “other,” being able to say “I am not that”), to help them understand their own subjectivities, their own trauma; they come to understand themselves as they exist “in relation.”

I think we can feel an energy in other spaces as well. For example, the feeling of walking down a quiet street on a sunny day; there’s an energy that emanates from the sidewalk.

Or entering a boardroom full of businessmen wearing suits in a corporate office made of glass;

This analysis also extends to the ways that our own subjectivities are informed by the environments around us. For example, the ways that my PTSD is triggered when I’m walking home alone at night.

Or standing in Times Square at midnight on a Saturday night;

In this sense, I was aware of the transmission of affect within particular spaces, and the ways that our own sense of self, trauma, and emotion are influenced by interactions with others, but I always saw them as two distinct concepts:

I know that the place where it happened has an energy to it now, one that does not solely live inside of me and is not purely informed by my own affect. And I can imagine that there exists a phantasm, or even a haunting, that permeates these spaces, holding the stories and experiences of violence, whether it be sexual, structural, or institutional violence, that these institutions have attempted to suppress within themselves, within the spaces we negotiate every day.

My mind vs. other people.

My body vs. the environment.

But what would happen if we were willing to imagine that these distinct categories were not as concrete as we once thought them to be? Wouldn’t it be possible that trauma and affect could exist in non-human, objective spaces? What would happen if we stopped privileging our own subjectivities as humans?

Anthropologists (cultural constructionists) view affect as contingent and contextual; it is understood and managed within a particular cultural context. Yael Navaro-Yashin extends this anthropological analysis to suggest that affect is not a singularly human phenomenon. She suggests that we must understand affect as it is created from interactions with space and materiality. Contrary to the psychoanalytic analysis, Navaro-Yashin proposes that places emanate energy as well.

In her book, the one my friend was talking about, she describes the ways that the ruins in Cyprus hold

Or the place on campus where it happened, where violence turned into trauma.

As such, I would like to offer the idea that maybe our trauma also exists outside of ourselves. Maybe our trauma lives in other places and our interactions with these places can help us better understand and engage with our trauma. Maybe our emotions aren’t always our own and don’t always come from a place within.

I’m still not sure if I believe this, but maybe this way of thinking and understanding has a radical potential.

Maybe it means that we don’t have to carry the weight of our trauma alone as it flows within and without us; Maybe this means that our stories and our trauma are trapped within these spaces and eventually others will feel them too; Maybe this means that we aren’t as alone as we thought we were.

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Sonia Ionescu

Molly Lu

Rahma Wiryomartono

Anonymous

SELF PORTRAITS

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8 ON BEING CARAMEL AND QUEER Creolization, rootlessness, and colonial legacies

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Statistically, we’re headed toward an age where everybody’s going to be, like, caramel and queer.”

We’ve all heard versions of this sentiment in recent years – this one comes from Ilana, the Jewish and white protagonist of Broad City, the seminal text on the millennial psyche.

Being mixed-race is increasingly commonplace, and there’s an assumption that within a few years it will represent the ‘face of the human race.’

Mixed-race people are often fetishized and are inaccurately presented as harbingers of a ‘post-racial’ utopia.

While mixed-race people are thought to be a ‘modern innovation,’ the evidence of a post-racial society, people forget that there already exist countries and regions where the so-called ‘general population’ is entirely composed of ‘mixed-race’ people called Creoles.

Creole is a complex and debated term encompassing race, culture, language, ethnicity, and diverse colonial legacies.

You can find Creole people in Haiti, the Caribbean, in the United States and on islands in the Indian Ocean. All of us have diverse histories and cultures, and can’t be grouped in one category. However, our existence stems from the same source: the slave trade and colonialism. We are descendants of European colonial settlers and/or the slaves and indentured workers they uprooted and relocated to the colonies.

I identify as Mauritian Creole, a subset of the population of Mauritius Island that is often homogenized and dubbed the ‘general population’ – those who don’t fit the official categories of Chinese Mauritian, Indian Mauritian, and Muslim Mauritian. However, Mauritian Creoles are an incredibly diverse group of people, divided within themselves, despite claims to the contrary by the government and national history. Colourism plays an important role in creating those divisions. In part due to colonial legacy, Creoles with lighter skin, such as myself, have the privilege to access higher social and economic status than those with darker skin. Specific ‘mixes’ of races are also valued more than others; for instance, Creoles who are direct descendants of French colonizers still occupy a dominant position in Mauritian society. While these divisions are blatant and commonly known by most Mauritian Creoles, we continue to be homogenized, by non-Creoles and Creoles alike, as the ‘general population’ for convenience and a lack of understanding. This homogenization is a constant source of anxiety for Creoles who are unable to place their bodies in

By Anne-Cécile Favory the greater context of the world. We are lumped together as a rootless people to either be ignored, because we don’t fit neatly into boxes of ethnicity or nationality, or romanticized as evidence of a successful colonial experiment; one that produced an ideal and seemingly ‘harmonious’ society composed of people belonging to no nation.

The lack of clear connection to a greater historical context and our ethnic ambiguity is what ties us together. Often considered ‘rootless hybrids,’ we serve as bodies on which to project myths and identities for nationalist purposes.

Our bodies are submitted as evidence of the possibility of a harmonious, multiracial, ‘post-racial’ society. However, it is often forgotten that these bodies were born from colonial violence. My ancestors were forcibly uprooted and any ties to their original homeland, culture, and community were purposefully destroyed to disempower them. Without the violent history of slavery, and the exploitative nature of the colonial project, we would not exist. The idea of a utopic Creole society erases the very root of our existence.

My culture is a collection of reconstructed traditions from Northern India, Eastern Africa, Madagascar, Southeastern China, and France; the supposed – it was only transmitted through word of mouth – birthplaces of my ancestors.

When placed in the communities of my ancestors, such as when attending weddings, New Year’s celebrations or dinners, I’ve learn to mirror them and perform these cultures. These communities are welcoming, and feel comfortable, but something is always off. I do not look like them, I do not speak the language, I do not share the same historical context, and I have no ties to a homeland. To the best of my abilities, I mirror the practices and norms of these communities, but I am, and always will be an outsider. I have no substantial claims to any of these cultures, because I stand at the periphery of all of them. My combined ancestry is not enough for me to be considered part of those communities. My physical features – my brown skin with yellow undertones, my black curly hair, and my dark brown eyes – often undermine any claims I have to be part of some of them. Instead, identities are projected onto my body.

I am used to hearing: “You don’t speak [insert language historically spoken by brown people]!” No, I don’t. I speak the languages of my colonizers, French and English. My parents never taught me my island’s local Creole dialect, not finding much value in doing so, because it is not spoken outside of the island or the diaspora. My ‘cul-

ture’ is one where my family celebrates Chinese New Year, Diwali, Easter, and Christmas.

After I’m told I don’t speak the language I’m ‘supposed to’, the next thing I usually hear is, “You look like [insert nationality here], but not quite!”

Right, my features aren’t quite right to fit anywhere. “Something is off.” You’ll spend the next twenty minutes trying to figure what it is exactly. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. When you can’t figure it out, you’ll shrug. I’ll shrug. We’ll move on.

My body comes close to fitting in, but never quite does.

I was talking to my mom, who was born and grew up in Mauritius, about this recent identity crisis. She reassured me that this was normal, that I came from a long line of Mauritian Creoles who have felt the angst of being rootless and living at the periphery of cultural communities. She said that even now, in her forties, she still feels that emptiness of broken ties to pre-colonial communities, families, and homeland passed on from one generation to the other. However, she also acknowledges that my siblings and I face a new set of challenges as immigrants to Canada. Here, our bodies are perceived differently than they would in Mauritius, and finding community here is even more difficult.

She gave me three choices: I could choose to embrace one particular community of our ancestors and perform that culture; I could recognize the richness in me and choose to align with the national stance of the “rainbow people;” or I could continue to live in that ambiguous “something is off” space – the space created by forced assimilation and intermixing to advance the colonial project, and that now stands between me and a coherent collective identity.

After consideration, I have chosen to place my body and its histories in that “off” space. For me, it is the only space that doesn’t excuse or ignore the violent colonial history of the Creole people in Mauritius. If I were to embrace one community over another, it would erase the trauma of my ancestors, and if I conformed to the national slogan of the “rainbow people,” I would ignore the continued impact of colonial structures that are still in place, and validate the results of the colonial project. Idealizing or denying my multi-racial, multi-cultural, and so-called ‘post-race’ body would erase colonial violence felt by the generations before me and the legacy that still stands. Instead, I choose to acknowledge that it exist in all its multiplicities and sit in the discomfort that it brings.

WALKING THROUGH ROOMS

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Words and Visuals by Coco Zhou

Content warning: discussions of self harm, suicidal ideation

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uring one of my visits to the emergency room this summer, I met a doctor who wore a checkered shirt and spoke in a gentle voice. He was young, about to complete his residency at that particular hospital. We chatted about my studies (“So contemporary art is, like, paintings with colourful stripes?”) while he gave me stitches. “What happened?” he asked. I told him.

“Oh,” he said, “I’m so sorry. That must’ve been hard.”

Another had asked me, “is it because of school?” (Sure.) “Do you live with anyone?” (No.) “Are you serious about…?” (No, it was merely a gesture.) “Do you have a plan?” (No, I don’t.

I promise.) There were nurses who checked in on me constantly. “Do you feel like you might hurt yourself?” (No, but if you keep asking, I swear I will.) I woke up one morning to a breakfast plate on my lap. My neighbour peered over. “If you aren’t going to eat the cheese, can I have it?” We complained about the guy who had screamed through the night. “Probably fucked in the head,” my new friend said. (Me too.)

Like a supernova, my dreams are hot and loud and threatening. In these dreams, I am constantly running, blood pumping behind my eyes, my legs heavy and full of lead. These sensations dissipate as soon as I open my eyes, blue bedroom buzzing with aftershock. The rest of the day is blank. The rest is white noise. Hours creep. Each day an iteration of the previous, channeled into static.

In the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away, the child protagonist and her parents are trapped in a ghost world. Forced to adopt a new name, she is told to always remember her original name. If she forgets it, she cannot go home. I’ve cried many times watching this scene. I’ve forgotten so many things, my memories sounds and images from another life. My most buried thoughts bear the fruit of screaming. Can I still go home if it ceased to exist a long time ago? If I were never meant to have a home? If I forget who I am? One day, you walk through a room and realize what you were holding is gone. You can’t find it, even when you get down on your knees.

I know this is all very alarming. But the alternative is always worse.

The word “recovery” signals progression. The path of recovery, they say. A path is linear and designates a certain chronology. Like a piece of prose, it proceeds.

Trauma time is written in verse, line upon line, ledge on ledge. Verse reverses. Your body remembers each and every time you have been hurt. Sudden anger, fear, a twitch, phantom pain, “I’m sorry I’m so sorry please don’t leave me.” A flashback doesn’t always involve vision. In my experience it often does not. The body speaks pre-human tongues, a language not yet codified. If you don’t believe in what your body tells you, no one will.

Trying to locate a piece of memory is like walking through rooms full of strangers. One day, I may find a child in one of those rooms. The child that used to be me lived across the ocean in another country, which I no longer recognize. I suspect it doesn’t recognize me, either. There is nothing inherently bad about losing attachment. Your body does this to survive. It doesn’t always succeed, but it works hard to forget.

Over time your body learns to deal with bad things by itself. My memory is full of intentional blanks. The more I become aware of these blanks, however, the more I try to excavate meaning out of them. My psychiatrist insists that dwelling on awful feelings is not useful.

I want to tell her that the decision to linger inside trauma is not arrived at logically. I feel myself summoned to the task, the same way I am called upon to confront the world’s injustices. The child that used to be me was brought across the ocean through a current of blood and money, a system of labour build upon bodies and bodies of knowledge. I could not have existed without this relationship to other bodies. I have a responsibility toward them. I cannot possibly heal without them.

“It must’ve been hard.” This kind of response is good for ticking off a point on an empathy checklist. Meanwhile, your wounds keep bleeding because stitches won’t keep them closed, because trauma has no boundaries, because no space is a safe space when the world wants you dead at every turn. There is so much your doctor doesn’t ask you, may not care to ask you, doesn’t want to hear you say.

Friend, you were built to survive. You have always known this. Trauma has no discrete edges, and neither do our bodies. No matter how many times I’ve beaten it, cut it open, burnt it, starved it, tried to get rid of it, my body finds a way back. It bleeds and writhes in pain, and this is proof that I am still alive, isn’t it?

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YELLOW SKIN, WHITE MASKS

By Ki-eun Peck

I

have a phrase I use to describe myself: proudly Korean, fiercely Canadian. It’s accurate. It’s also telling.

Growing up, I was given two choices for how I should approach my identity: pride or shame. For me, the choice was obvious. I’m proud to be Korean - why shouldn’t I be?

My grandparents lived in a nation that was first torn apart by Japanese colonialism, and then by internal division.They lived, first-hand, in a nation that went from having one of the lowest GDPs in the world to one of the highest;, from a time when hunger, not designer brands, described the average Korean’s appearance. I’m proud to be Korean.

But, like I said – I have to be.

Nothing has defined my identity more than my appearance: my flat face and my feminine, delicate body. This isn’t by choice – certainly, not mine. This is how other people have categorized, labeled, and treated me – by judging what I look like and determining my identity based on those judgments.

No two words have been used to identify me as much as “Asian girl.”

Over the years, the preceding adjectives have changed. Ugly, hot, bitchy, smart, stupid – the list is endless in its cyclic continuity, but fairly short with original content.

If I was not proud, I would be ashamed. I would be ashamed to be seen as the “Other.” the girl with slit eyes, a low-set nose, darkbrown hair. However, when society tries to define me, they often do so by contrasting what they think an “Asian girl” should look like, and what they judge my appearance to be. My physicality either falls within their expectations – or it doesn’t. Compliments are never simple - or truly flattering. “You’re really hot – for an Asian. You have big tits – for an Asian. You have big eyes – for an Asian.” There’s also the flip side, when my appearance falls in line with their preconceived ideas: “I love your beautiful Asian eyes. You’re one of those cute Asian girls. You’re a smart Asian girl.” I’m not saying it’s inherently wrong to point out aspects of me that are inconsistent – or consistent – with some general trend. But it’s wrong when part of my actual identity is reduced to stereotypical social constructs that are contrasted by expectations of my physical appearance and body. It baffles me that I have to say this, but 21 years of bewildered lived experience have taught me that I do. My race is not the singular causal determinant for my intelligence. I’m not smart be-

cause I’m Asian. I’m smart because I inherited my parents’ genes, because they raised me with care, because I grew up loving to read, because I’m curious, because I like learning, because I AM smart – me, Ki-eun Peck, not “That Asian Girl.”

The thing about being “Other” is that the preconceived ideas of supposed exotic mystique create room for fantasy. I am the voyeur’s favoured genie, ready to grant personalized wishes from a customized lamp. For those who have a fetish for Asian girls, my physical features represent their Orientalist fantasy.

For those that want to see someone ‘unique’ and unconventional, they see me as the Canadianized Asian.

Some aspects of the way people see me have become internalized, and I have struggled against letting this affect the way I see myself.

I’ve gone through periods of wishing I looked more like Lucy Liu, the solitary Western pinnacle of Asian feminine beauty, with her high cheekbones and trademark almond eyes. I’ve also spent hours staring at the mirror, wishing my nose was higher, my eyes were larger, and my skin had red undertones instead of yellow. But I’ve escaped relatively unscathed – like anyone else, I have my insecurities – but this hasn’t resulted in internalized self-hatred or shame. For a long time now, whenever I look at my reflection I’ve seen “Ki-eun” more than stereotypes and (failed) expectations. At the same time, it concerns me when I wonder whether this is because enough of my appearance is relatively consistent with societal expectations of beauty, whether they be from the “East” or the “West”.

What do I define myself as?

Proudly Korean – fiercely Canadian. Fiercely, because my Canadianness is doubted. Challenged.

Scoffed. Even if I didn’t embrace my Asianness, my Koreanness, my femininity, that wouldn’t stop from people using it to define me every day. But it’s rare that people defined me as Canadian. I’m fiercely Canadian because I that is the part of my identity I need to defend.

Countless times I’ve been asked the eternal question: “where are you from?” To be frank, it’s usually asked by men – at parties, masking ignorance with alcohol; in cafes, masking interference with interest; on the street, jeering, masking harassment with ‘flattery.’ I am from Port Moody, British Columbia. It’s a quaint little city in metro-Vancouver, notable for its scenic nature and saltwater surroundings.

I was born and raised in Canada; my passport says, with clinical cer-

tainty, “CANADIAN.” My portrait, next to this word, should be more than enough proof, rather than doubt or juxtaposition. This isn’t an essay about what it means to be Canadian – that’s a whole other can of worms and documents cramped with words. All I know right now, is that as sure as I know that 1+1=2, I am equally Korean and Canadian. Just because I don’t find the two mutually exclusive, doesn’t mean other people view me in the same manner.

What do I define myself as?

As a child, English was my strongest subject. Cabinets are filled with report cards, scattered with compliments and praises of how “Ki-eun has a way with words.” I was constantly writing, and constantly excelling. English was my strongest subject, and English is still my strongest language. I don’t remember learning English, in the same way I don’t remember learning how to breathe.

I don’t remember learning Korean. Nor do I remember losing it – but I know I have. The longer I am away from home – away from people who can call me 기 은, who can switch seamlessly between Korean and English, tongue embracing lips and sounds with the same easy grace as water touching sand at the edge of a beach – the longer I am away from this, the heavier my own tongue grows, and my voice shakes not with excitement but fear.

Language is my most intimate identification. A large part of how I define my Koreanness, my connection to a Korean community and culture, is through language. I do not exaggerate when I say one of my greatest fears is losing my language – because, for me, I would be losing my connection to an important half of me. This connection is rare, and it is precious, because it is one that I conceptualize as internal to myself and untouched by my body and society’s external expectations. I have a fear of losing my language, and of losing my connection to my Korean identity and my Korean ethnicity. This is my personal passport - proof that I am still “authentic,” that I am not a ‘banana,’ that I have not stumbled under the heavy weight of assimilation. I know these conceptions are not right. I know, rationally, that I am Korean as firmly as I know my favourite colour is blue and mint makes me sneeze. I know I will be just as Korean even if my preference switches to red in the next five minutes.

ANOREXIA ANONYMOUS

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My story of battling against an eating disorder, recovery, and life today

By Alexandra Yiannoutsos

Content warning: eating disorder, self-harm

E

ating disorders are fairly misunderstood. By that, I do not mean there is not enough literature on them, or that they are completely removed from the mainstream. On the contrary, almost every day there seems to be someone famous speculated to be suffering from an eating disorder, or admitting that they suffer(ed) from one. What is seldom discussed is the actual experience. The question that follows when a person admits to have suffered from an eating disorder is usually, “why?”: why did you do this to yourself, why would you destroy your body like this, is somewhat abstract. We can speculate the reasons from clinical research, but those who suffer from an eating disorder are often ashamed, afraid, or simply cannot describe their experience in words – at least that is what it was like for me.

People saw my body becoming frail and sick. What they did not see was my mind ravaging my being long before. Now I will confess, five years after my descent into a self-made hell.

My environment very much influenced my plummet into the abyss of anorexia. If you remember yourself at fourteen, you will most likely agree that it was a very tumultuous age. During that time, I was exiting a state of innocence while also battling familial instability and personal insecurity. I had little control over my life. I thought that I was ready to be independent, but five years later, I realize just how naïve I was. Anxiety and depression have, for many generations, affected the women on my mother’s side of the family. That, along with the unusually high levels of stress created from familial turmoil, combined perfectly into an eating disorder.

From summer to fall of my freshman year of high school, I felt happy. I started running. I had a group of supportive friends. My courses were intellectually challenging.z Despite this, there were always two voices in my head: hatred and reason. I did not simply hate my appearance. My appearance was my worth. Looking in the mirror became an uncontrollable attack on my senses, a common symptom of anxiety, depression, and mental illness. After the homecoming dance, I remember going to the bathroom in a 24-hour Denny’s where the underage kids hung out, and crying at the sight of my face and body in a full size mirror. This was in October.

It is difficult to describe anxiety’s despotism. My mind constantly spewed horrifically damaging thoughts, making me feel constantly irritated with people, yet simultaneously in need of a human connection. I wanted the changes in my body to be noticed, while also wanting it to be my own secret. I would internally comment on the flaws I saw in girls’ bodies, feeling superior to them as human beings, all the while criticizing myself. The frustratingly contradictory thoughts were mentally exhausting. The more weight shed, the stronger my ambitions became; the harsher I treated myself, the more I embraced isolation; the further entrenched and truly addicted I became, the closer I was to acieving perfection.

The physical manifestation of anorexia came later. I experienced a type of exhaustion that made my eyes numb and limbs limp. After school, I would fall into bed and sleep until the middle of the night because I had such little sources of energy entering my body. I could not focus. I would experience periods of high energy then crash completely. I had trouble standing up from a sitting position because of drastic muscle loss. My hair fell out until it was unrecognizably thin.

My nails became brittle. My facial appearance changed not only due to weight loss, but because my eyes and cheeks had sunk into my face, a common symptom of malnourishment.

My arms became thin enough to reach your fingers around.

The gap between my thighs was multiple inches wide. I was so cold. I shook constantly because I could not physically warm myself, even in the summer months. I remember sitting in class watching the hairs on my arms rise and fall with my goosebumps. Losing hunger’s sensation completely, I felt, was an accomplishment. I clearly remember a conversation with my father while during summer vacation where he told me we needed to make dinner. After I said that I was fine, that I was not really hungry, – insert any excuse to get out of the situation here – his eyes widened and he told me, “We haven’t eaten in nine hours.”

The more weight shed, the strongers my ambitions became; the harsher I treated myself, the more I embraced isolation; the further entrenched and truly addicted I became, the closer I was to acheiving perfection.

A part of my experience with an eating disorder that I have not disclosed with anyone is the aspect of guilt and punishment. I would go to extremes to avoid hunger and rid my body of any sustenance that may have infiltrated its barriers with diet pills, painkillers, and laxatives. Despite all this, I would still ‘give in’ to the desire for food. Once the damage was done, I would denounce myself, my character, my worth as a human being and would hide in the secrecy of the shower to sit under scalding hot water for as long as I determined was appropriate. The outcome was often blistered and discolored skin.

I was forced into recovery by my parents about nine months after my eating disorder had significantly accelerated. I was what they called a “Level 4” patient. Level 5 was hospitalization, which entailed constant supervision and a feeding tube. At Level 4, my parents had com-

plete control over a strict meal plan. It took me hours to eat extremely small meals because my stomach had shrunk to a point where even amounts of food people considered ‘snack sized’ pained me and made me feel sick. I went to the recovery clinic three times per week to get weighed, have my vitals checked, and check in with the doctor and therapists. At the clinic I would have to strip down and wear only a hospital gown, so as not to hide any weights or scars from the doctor. There were no numbers on the scale. The medical information showed up on a screen hidden inside a cabinet that if opened would set off an alarm. I would scream, cry, and argue to get out of visiting the clinic. They were mean there, I would say. They think I’m a bad person. They don’t care about me. I can take care of myself. Nothing is wrong with me.

I was in recovery for three years. The doctors called me the ‘rubber band’ because every time I would come in with a good report, the next appointment I had lost even more weight. I was still in school during this time. I was actively engaged in extra-curriculars like Model U.N.. I spent a summer abroad, two years after my recovery started. I applied for university. I met the man who would become my fiancé.

All of this while visiting an eating disorder recovery center and battling mental illness.

I still struggle with blaming myself for my descent into the illness, but I know that the woman I have become is not defined, but only scarred, by this sickness. I experience residual anorexia-induced thoughts every single day. There have been a few occasions where seeing people sick with anorexia has caused re-traumatization. When the pain reemerges I have very little defense against it. Despite all of this, I have learned many valuable lessons. I used to think that I could be the best advocate for anorexia survivors, that I could save everyone. I learned that just because I have experience with something does not mean I am equipped to help others. I do not have the resources, nor am I the person needed to help anyone suffering from the illness.

I have also learned about coping, kindness, and understanding. Opening your world to people you can trust and leaning on them for support is currently one of the most important features of my life, as well as being a safe place to which others can reach out. I am better able to articulate my emotions and admit when I need to make changes to improve my life. Every day presents its own challenges and is a learning experience. Sometimes I do well in balancing my health, work, social life, and sleep, but when I do not, I try to be kind to myself and try again the next day. Whether or not I am successful is by my own design. Developing an eating disorder has not stopped me and many others. I’ve learned that my experiences do not determine my future – only I have that power.

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POETRY AND ARTWORK my hands

summer in shanghai

i showered at my friend’s (my friend who would later grab my chest, without my consent (it’s okay because he’s gay)) and across from the shower was a mirror, full and wide. i did not recognize the body i saw. this body was not mine. i felt sick. and then i remembered, in the night, someone had crept into my room and changed my body with surgical tools, cutting into my flesh adding things i did not recognize and sewing me up again who was it? i try to remember i try so hard i forget myself and eventually, when i come back i realize that person was me. or was it you?

sometimes i forget that for more than a year my hands would shake, a cup would clatter in my hands, the foam spilling over. my hands keep shaking and i cannot make them stop. maybe i shouldn’t be trying to make them maybe i should coax them soothe them hold them love them these flower petals swaying, dancing in the wind.

erythro

i’m in the shower. this is where i feel safest. i’ve been here for a very long time, the water is burning my skin off and my feet are red red red

burning hot like my father’s. his feet carried him for decades before they betrayed him. i look down at his feet on my legs. if i could cut mine off and give them to him, i would.

Poems and visual | Chantelle Schultz

My Heartbeat to Yours | Sinthusha Kandiah

inverted | Anonymous The lines on my body reflect the stories of my soul: A cry for self certainty of my physicality’s permanence.

It must be that my ribcage that binds my heart and lungs, And the Body that binds my spirit, Harmonize for why fight against what is fighting for me?

Cat | Maya Schade

Study of Hands | Jennifer Guan

FEATURES

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Sarah Meghan Mah | The McGill Daily

Written by Cedric Parages

The next mass extinction event Following the Paris Agreement and the Trump election, McGill professors talk climate change in a changed world History and Policy The Paris Agreement was signed into force at the beginning of this month, with the United States, China, and the European Union all pledging to introduce the necessary policies to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2025.

Their end-goal is avoiding a global average warming increase of two degrees Celsius. But despite the success in introducing the agreement quickly, there are immense obstacles that it will face to turn its promises into reality. For one, there’s no binding enforcement mechanism to measure or limit emissions. But even if countries do follow through, the United Nations

Environment Program has warned that the Agreement’s targets to cut emissions will still result in three degrees Celsius of warming.

In another blow to environmental protections, Donald Trump, a vehement climate change denier, was elected as the next President of the U.S., the country with the second highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world. He has promised to cancel the United States’ plan to follow through with the Paris Agreement. His appointed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) leader will be Myron Ebell, another climate change denier, and his Department of Energy leader will be Mike McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist. Trump

has plans to block Obama’s newly introduced Clean Power Plan, remove regulations on protecting streams from coal mining, and remove wetland protection policies.

This isn’t the first time a U.S. president has stuck his fingers in his ears and hummed loudly when faced with climate change science. Ronald Reagan, U.S. President from 1981 to 1989, was a critic of environmental movements of the time and denied the possibility of climate change, despite NASA scientists already predicting the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on global temperatures from 1981 onwards. As soon as he was elected, he over-rode most of the Carter executory environmental

agenda, purposefully delayed and interfered with EPA assessments, and excluded liberal or environmentalist scientists from federal scientific advisory panels – all of which led to a mass resignation of EPA officials in 1983. His denial of the threat of climate change lulled many in the U.S. into a false sense of security, and funding for environmental research suffered.

The echoes of his arguments can still be heard today throughout the Republican party. Following in Reagan’s footsteps, a Trump presidency will reinforce public skepticism of climate change science and be a tremendous barrier to clearheaded environmental policy and transitioning to clean energy.

In light of Trump’s election, it’s more important than ever to present the facts on climate change – not just as abstract degrees or emissions volumes, but in terms of concrete implications. Climate change will, and does, impact all of us, but before we understand how it impacts humans, we need to take a look at how it impacts our environment – from honeybees to ocean currents. I talked to five McGill professors whose research intersects with climate change studies about the Paris Agreement, their visions for a more environmentally responsible future, and the effects of climate change on our atmosphere, oceans, and wildlife.

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FEATURES

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Jaye Ellis is an Associate Professor at McGill University in the Faculty of Environment and the Faculty of Law. Her current research focuses on social systems and transnational policy-making regarding environmental degradation.

The McGill Daily (MD): Do you consider the Paris Agreement an achievement for environmental lawmakers and agencies around the world? How effective do you think the U.N. will be at ensuring countries like China can successfully push laws to curb their emissions?

Jaye Ellis (JE): It is an achievement, yes. The process moved remarkably quickly, particularly compared to the experience with the Kyoto Protocol. Of course, significant compromises were made in order for us to get here. The quick response may be due at least in part to a sense on the part of many states that these obligations will not have much bite, but it could also be partly due to a growing sense of urgency.

I believe that the U.N. has some tools that it can use to push for implementation of climate laws and policies, but my attention is focused on other entities: civil society organizations, local (provincial, municipal) governments, and firms and industry associations. I believe that real progress will be achieved through the efforts of these actors more than [by] international organizations and national governments.

MD: Do you think the threats of climate change is being taken more seriously by the public and lawmakers? Will we see changes under Trudeau to Canadian environmental policy, like higher carbon taxes and subsidizing clean energy?

JE: Climate change denial is firmly behind us at the level of public discourse in this country.

That battle has been won. What

Lawrence Mysak

remains is to convince members of the population, first, that meaningful change can be brought about, and second, that vulnerable segments of the population will not have to bear a disproportionate burden either from climate change itself or from measures to reduce emissions and enhance [carbon] sinks. As I see it, Trudeau has no choice but to take climate change seriously and to forge ahead with measures to combat it. His government needs to create the conditions for a range of experiments in law and policy, which is not going to be easy, as it will involve taking risks and making bold moves – something that Canadians are not known for.

MD: How can countries like India comply with the Paris accord without limiting their means of economic development and expansion? Is it really possible to lower gas emissions worldwide while at the same time having to accommodate a growing standard of living for an exponential human population growth?

JE: Countries like India will need to see that a sustainable path to development is available. [...] It is possible, but it will require decisive action. We will need to be able to have difficult conversations about genetically modified crops, nuclear energy, economic incentive structures, public-private partnerships and adaptations. And actors around the world are going to need to come to those conversations with open minds, prepared to change their opinions. None of this is easy, but it is necessary, so we are going to have to find a way to do it.

MD: How do environmental lawmakers and agencies deal with situations where science on which the environmental laws and regulations are founded upon are questioned or denied by executive

Photo courtesy of Lawrence Mysak

branches of government – such as in the case of a Trump presidency?

“Regardless of who our political leaders are, we cannot wait for them to get their acts together, and increasingly, other actors are recognizing this.”

—­ Jaye Ellis Associate Professor, Faculty of Environment JE: National governments are, by and large, followers, not leaders, on this issue. As distressing as the prospect of a Trump presidency is, in every possible respect, he would have little capacity to draw policy experiments in jurisdictions like California to a halt. Regardless of who our political leaders are, we cannot wait for them to get their acts together, and increasingly, other actors are recognizing this.

Given the scope, scale, and complexity of the problem, it is difficult to think of a societal institution, public or private, that does not have something to contribute.

Atmosphere and Oceans 250 million years ago, the Earth experienced the greatest mass extinction event known to us: The Great Dying. 95 per cent of marine species and 70 per cent of all life on Earth perished during this period, largely due to great volcanic eruptions in Siberia which, for about a million years on and off, released massive amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfur into the air. The chemicals acidified and dissolved into the oceans, decreasing the surface pH of oceans by 0.1 for an estimated 10,000 years.

In comparison, studies show that the oceans today have also fallen by 0.1 in pH since the Industrial Revolution – which was only 100 years ago. The lead author behind the study, Matthew Clarkson, said that the comparable pH drop was a “massive warning and a worst case scenario, if we carry on with fossil fuels. Diversity didn’t recover for 5 million years.”

In the last century, ocean levels have risen by twenty centimetres, chalked up to melting glaciers and thermal expansion of existing bodies of water. In the Antarctic, ice shelves the size of small countries are rupturing and disintegrating.

If greenhouse emissions continue at their present rate, sea levels will eventually rise by 25 meters

Jaye Ellis

Photo courtesy of Lysanne Larose

over the next 500 to 1,000 years, submerging coasts and displacing what would today be 1.2 to 1.5 billion people. Other ‘business as usual’ models are predicting that by 2100, sea levels will rise between one and two meters, flooding U.S. coastal cities like Boston, Miami, New Orleans, and New York City. Other more ‘pessimistic’ estimates, where greenhouse gases continue to increase at a higher rate than today, predict a five to seven metre rise – enough to submerge London by 2100.

Lawrence Mysak is director of the Earth System Modelling Group in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. His research focuses on modeling carbon cycles and oceanic current oscillations of past time periods to better understand long term climate variability and change.

MD: Is limiting the global temperature average increase to two degrees or lower by 2030 really possible?

Lawrence Mysak (LM): It’s going to be very difficult, especially with countries [which] have really high rates of population growth and are striving for economic development and reach high standards of living. I’m not optimistic about achieving the set goal but I’m hoping for the best. The fastest we can transition our sources of energy and forms of transport the better it’s going to be.

MD: Are there any possible innovations to curb gas emissions that you think would work? Any that you are not a fan of?

LM: Geothermal power is very promising; it circulates water from about 200 metres below the Earth’s surface, where there is quite a bit of heat, and you can use it for both heating and cool-

ing. The initial investment is not cheap, but once you get it going it’s really efficient and clean in the long run for energy consumption.

Windmills can be noisy and affect some local ecosystems and take a lot of space. Another problem with windmill and solar power is storing the energy and transmitting it: a surplus of energy is great but storing and transporting it is not as easy as it sounds. [...] Using aerosol particles in the atmosphere to reflect radiation has potential but can damage the ozone layer. Iron fertilization enabling algal blooms to absorb carbon dioxide into the ocean is interesting but ultimately could have very negative effects on ocean wildlife and carbon cycles.

“I’m not optimistic about achieving the set goal but I’m hoping for the best.”

—­ Lawrence Mysak director of the Earth System Modelling Group MD: Is there any specific part of your research that you are excited about or find really important?

LM: I’m writing a chapter about the Thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic Ocean for a book. Thermohaline circulations are the current natural water flow patterns which transport heat through the oceans.

Currently, we have warming flows in the Atlantic coming up from the tropics upwards past North America to the poles. When the warm water reaches the poles, it releases

FEATURES

Christopher Buddle

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Photo courtesy of Christopher Buddle

warmth into the air and cools, becoming denser and sinks. This creates an overturning circulation where cooling water also travels the same general path as the warm water in the opposite direction. This circulation brings heat to Eastern North America and Western Europe. If the Greenland ice sheet melts, which is what is happening right now, the circulation would slow down and eventually stop entirely. Those areas I just mentioned which are being warmed by the circulation would then become much colder, but it would not contribute to the overall average temperature of the Earth. This circulation has not always existed, and when it did not, the oceans were five degrees colder than today.

Pollinators & honey bees

During the winter of 2008, 60 per cent of honey bee hives were lost to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) – and the scariest part is that we still don’t know exactly why it’s happening. Many factors are believed combine to contribute to CCD, climate change being one of them. Honey bees are not the only species experiencing this – wild bumblebees are also being decimated for unknown reasons. Honey bees are not only necessary for human food security and large-scale agriculture, they’re also essential for the vast majority of plant life, providing us with breathable oxygen and food for herbivores and omnivores.

To compound an already-dire situation, many entomologists and plant scientists are predicting that increased global temperatures will alter the timing of environmental cues for both pollination and flowering. An offset synchronization could spell disaster for non-insect pollinators like hummingbirds, who also depend on precise timing to migrate and feed in particular areas.

Christopher Buddle is an entomologist in the Faculty of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill’s MacDonald campus and is also the Associate Dean of Student Affairs.

His research focuses on commu-

nity ecology, food webs, and biodiversity of arthropods in the Arctic.

MD: Multiple factors, including climate change, are believed to provoke CCD. Has any other pollinator acted this way in the past or in the present? How serious is the situation going forward into the next decade?

Christopher Buddle (CB): Indeed, my understanding is that multiple factors are implicated. [...] To me, there needs to be more focus on the conservation of wild bees, and attention to preservation of habitats that these species need is critically important to pollination. It’s hard to predict the next decades, but I will state that conservation of insects needs to be a higher priority, notably for species that are involved in key ecosystem services: pollinators, but also (for example) species that are important predators for pest species.

“Conservation of insects needs to be a higher priority, notably for species that are involved in key ecosystem services.”

—Christopher Buddle Associate Professor, Faculty of Natural Resource Sciences MD: Is it possible that, because of climate change, plants could start to flower out of sync with some of their pollinators? Is there any evidence from past natural warmings or coolings of the planet that pollinators are well-suited to adapt to these changes in cues?

CB: I can’t speak on time scales of thousands of years; however, we can look to shorter-term changes in response to changing climates. [...] There is a study published

this year that describes temporal overlap between plant flowering and pollination are shrinking in the Arctic as it warms. This work points to the need for careful ecological monitoring in our most fragile ecosystems so that we can properly assess thresholds of change, and implications for critical ecosystem functions.

MD: Insects make up the majority of terrestrial biomass and biodiversity of the planet. What would happen, were insects to lose an immense amount of their biodiversity through a mass extinction event?

CB: To put it bluntly: arthropods (insects, spiders and their relatives) are critical to our very survival, and mass extinction would mean collapse of critical ecosystem functions upon which we depend. Now, that being said, arthropods have been around for millions of years, and are highly adaptable, so I don’t predict ‘mass extinctions’ as much as I might predict a homogenization of the fauna (e.g., increases in invasive/ introduced species at the expense of native fauna), or major shifts in distributions of some species. This has obvious implications for us in the realm of human health and wellbeing, and pointing to insects as vectors of disease is one of many examples.

Ecology and Biodiversity Loss Many wildlife population ecologists believe that we have now entered the sixth mass extinction event on planet Earth. A new study from Stanford has found that species are going extinct as quickly now as they were when most dinosaurs died out, 66 million years ago.

The biggest culprits are land clearing and habitat fragmentation for agriculture and urban expansion, introduction of invasive species, ocean acidification, and chemical toxins that are poisoning ecosystems and waterways.

Many of the mammal species under threat, like gorillas, elephants, rhinos, tigers, wolves, and bears, are “keystone species.” Removing keystone species will create chain reactions known as extinction cascades, resulting in the extinction of other species.

Andrew Gonzalez is a professor in the Department of Biology and is the Canada Research Chair and the Director of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science. His research focuses on ecosystem ecology and specializes in causes and impacts of biodiversity loss.

MD: What areas of the world do you think will have the hardest time combating loss of biodiversity and extinction cascades?

Andrew Gonzalez (AG): Threats to biodiversity, such as

climate change or habitat loss, are not evenly distributed across the world. Some places are experiencing faster rates of warming or more extreme weather events (fluctuations) than others. Similarly, some parts of the world are experiencing very high rates of habitat loss. Those locations where multiple threats exist simultaneously will have the hardest time combating the loss of biodiversity. Areas most at risk include the tropics, especially South America and Central Africa where rates of habitat loss have been high. [...] Species inhabiting highly human-transformed landscapes often have little remaining habitat and so habitat fragmentation affects their ability to move from habitat to habitat to evade threats and shift their ranges poleward under climate change. It seems that many northern species may be struggling to shift their ranges northward (see recent example [of] bumblebees in Canada).

“These elevated rates are consistent with a mass extinction event, but we have not yet lost the number of species consistent with past mass extinctions.”

—Andrew Gonzalez Professor, Department of Biology

Andrew Gonzalez

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The bottom line is that the threats occur worldwide and they vary in their form and intensity. Biodiversity is expected to change dramatically over the coming century both because of extinctions and the humancaused introductions of exotic species. Combating species loss requires urgent action, whilst we still have a window of opportunity. This must involve curbing climate change, but also mitigating the impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation. It is the cocktail of threats that is deadliest.

MD: Studies are concluding that the rate of extinction worldwide is close to the rate of extinction faced by the dinosaurs during the last mass extinction event. Are we essentially entering the sixth mass extinction event?

AG: Estimates of global rates of species extinction are indeed ten to a hundred times the ‘normal’ background rate observed in the fossil record. These elevated rates are consistent with a mass extinction event, but we have not yet lost the number of species consistent with past mass extinctions in which over 50 per cent of species went extinct. Since 1600, an estimated 906 species have gone extinct globally [...] which is roughly 0.01 per cent, assuming ten million species on Earth (note we don’t know exactly how many species there are on Earth). We talk of a sixth mass extinction because if currently high rates of extinction continue for the next few centuries then we will reach those very high levels of species extinction seen in past mass extinction events. Conservation biologists are calling for action now to curb these extinction rates. We have a window of opportunity before climate change compounds the negative impacts of other human causes of extinction.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Gonzalez

SCI+TEch

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

The gut: our second brain

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Complex interactions between our brain and gut

Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez The McGill Daily

W

e tend to think of neurons exclusively as the constituents of our brain. Neurons inside our skulls are part of the Central Nervous System (CNS), which is made up of our brains and spinal cords. But communication occurs between the CNS and the rest of our bodies via the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). There are an enormous amount of neurons and their projections – axons, packed in bunches called nerves – that perform their works outside of our skulls.

In contrast, the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), an involuntary division of our PNS, regulates the function of the rest of our vital organs, such as our heart, lungs, and gastrointestinal tracts. Within the ANS lies the enteric plexus, a whole set of neurons dispersed along the entire length of the gut. The enteric neurons secrete neurotransmitters – chemical messengers produced by neurons – to control motility and function of our gastrointestinal tract.

In defiance of the image we have of our intestines as something remote and radically different from our brains, it is a fact that we have around five hundred million neurons nested between the layers of our gut, which is why some scientists actually call it “our second brain.”

Our brain talks to our gut One of the reasons why studying the relationship between the brain and the digestive system became so popular and important is that it represented a paradigm shift in allopathic medicine’s (a type of medicine in which the symptoms produced by the treatment are the opposite of that produced by the disease) dualistic approach of disease.

In this view, mind and body are considered independently, and “physical” disorders are considered more real and worthy of medical attention than ‘psychological’ issues. In terms of the gut, this means that digestion problems and abdominal pain are taken care of by a gastroenterologist while anxiety or depression are treated by a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, without any necessary dialogue between these two lines of medical care. Digestive diseases were among the first medical problems to fit into a biopsychosocial model of disease, which considers the complex interrelation between a person’s social environment, their ‘psychological life’ – emotions and thoughts – and their bodies.

When we face a stressful situation, such as being confronted with potential danger, our body reacts by increasing our heartrate, making us sweat, dilating our pupils and pumping more blood into our muscles. This evolutionarily conserved

response – sometimes referred to as “fight or flight” response – is orchestrated in the brain and manifested through the “sympathetic” division of the ANS; stressful situations trigger the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which in turn activate our muscles and other organs to get us ready to react to danger. The counterpart of this “sympathetic” response is not often spoken about: the “parasympathetic” division of the ANS, fundamental for many of the functions of the gastrointestinal system. When a stress response is activated, the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic function is altered. The enteric system is sensitive to this change, affecting gut sensation, motility, and secretion.

Under these concepts, conditions such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and some kinds of abdominal pain were recognized as dysregulations of the ‘brain-gut axis.’ The brain-gut axis falls under the control of the ANS, and is a great example of the stress activation response, and its effects on other organs. Therefore, the communication between the brain and the neurons of the enteric plexus – the ‘second brain’ – became one of the first scientifically accepted explanations on how emotional states may affect our digestive system.

Does our gut talk back to our brain?

Acknowledging that our brain communicates with our gut may seem logical now, but it is still a little counterintuitive to accept that the opposite is true: digestive system activity has an effect on mood and cognition. However, in our everyday lives, we use expressions such as “having butterflies in our stomach” to describe what we feel when we are nervous, or a ‘gut feeling’ to speak about instinct or intuition.

These expressions are not coincidental. We have all felt the abdominal sensations that accompany certain strong emotional states, as if we could truly feel things with our gut.

The form of communication between two neural structures is often circular, which is why we use the term “neural circuits.” In a neural circuit, information does not flow in only one direction; most nervous structures that send “forward” signals receive feedback information from its target, and the brain-gut axis is no exception. It then makes perfect sense that our enteric plexus can also play a role in ‘higher order’ functions that we thought were exclusive of the CNS, such as cognition and emotion.

In recent years, the focus on the relationship between the brain and the guts has been reversed. There has been a huge spike in research exploring the way the former influences the latter. Local connections between the enteric neurons can function somewhat independently

Lucie Couderc | Illustrator from the CNS, processing information of what is going on inside the gut and responding with reflex activity. But enteric neurons will also send information about the state of the gastrointestinal tract back to the brain, where some of it will reach our consciousness. Interestingly, the focus of this new rise in research is not so much about the neurons in our second brain or the functioning of our intestines themselves, but about a third pivotal angle to understand this interaction: the ecosystem of the bacteria that inhabit our guts.

The Microbiome project Our bodies are home to trillions of microbes, fundamental for the biological equilibrium of the tissues they inhabit. Throughout our life, every organ in contact with the external environment – our skin, mouth, nose, vagina and respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts – is colonized by different microbes: a few fungi and protists, but mainly numerous bacterial species. Since 2007, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched a project to characterize and catalog the microbes in our organisms, leading to a growing body of experiments showing the important roles of these microscopic beings in our overall health.

Understanding the gut as a complex microbial ecosystem is of crucial importance to study the gutbrain axis. Approximately a hundred trillion bacteria live in its distal part.

Although some of these bacteria are implicated in pathological processes, the great majority provides health benefits. Besides supplying gut cells with some essential nutrients, gut microbes help us digest and defend against infection, caused

by other types of bacteria. The communication between these various bacteria in our gut and the cells of our immune system has also proven essential for maintaining an equilibrium in immunity. The fundamental role of microbiota in our guts and the importance of the gut-brain axis has given biological credibility in an idea that would have been considered absurd in older views of human physiology: that microbes in our guts can influence our mental states.

The evidence for this interaction comes from different lines of animal research. Some researchers have focused on altering the intestinal microbes to observe the impact on the development of the CNS. For example: a research group from the University of Freiburg in Germany studying mice that had been genetically modified, observed a role of intestinal microbes in the maturation of cells in the CNS. Germfree mice had a bigger amount of microglia, a non-neuronal cell that is responsible for the brain’s immune response. Interestingly, the activity of microglial cells has also been recently linked to mood symptoms in inflammatory diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis (such as blurred vision, muscle weakness, and muscle spasms). Parallel to this series of studies, other researchers focused on the impact of mice gut microbes on anxiety and depression-like symptoms. A recent review by Jane Foster, a researcher in the Psychiatry Department at McMaster University, summarizes a series of studies in which mice that had been genetically altered to change their microbial flora showed important changes in behaviour. A third approach has been to give pro-biotics – substances that improve the gut microbes devel-

opment – to mice with lab-induced models of anxiety and depression, leading to an improvement of symptoms.

However, as interesting as these results are, studies in humans have not been as consistent. Genetic modifications to alter the gut microbiota are not feasible in humans, thus experimental evidence has been limited to the administration of pro-biotics and the measurement of anxiety and depression symptoms. A 2014 study done by Kristin Schmidt and other researchers in Oxford showed that the administration of probiotics reduced the release of cortisol, a hormone related to stress, but to date few studies have looked at the impact of probiotics on behaviour. Given the scarcity of articles, and the diverse methods of research, we still lack a systematic review of the literature with a sound conclusion on the effect of pro-biotics on mood symptoms.

We are still far from understanding the whole functioning of the microbiome-gut-brain axis, and therefore it is premature to jump to conclusions of its role in mental health and disease. In circular interactions such as the brain-gut axis, it is hard to distinguish correlation from causation. But the recent increase in evidence from different lines of research on the microbiomegut-brain axis tells us that it is time to start accepting that our gastrointestinal system function is not merely digesting food. In the same way that we acknowledged that our brain affects the functioning of our gut, it’s time to change another paradigm, and begin to more seriously consider research suggesting that our gut and its microbes can also play a role in the functioning of our brain.

culture

November, 21 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Comfort food for the diaspora

15

South Asian Film Festival fosters diversity and empowerment

Sarah Shahid Culture Writer

H

ow does the modern South Asian individual perceive concepts of identity and progress? The South Asian Film Festival (SAFF), which ran from November 4 to 6, explored this question. Organized by the Kabir Centre of the Arts, the annual festival showcased 17 films of various formats, made by and about the people of the Asian subcontinent, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and its diasporic communities in other parts of the world.

Ranging from short to feature films to documentaries, this year’s films highlighted the transformations and endurance of the family across the subcontinent and its diaspora, dealing with recurring themes such as women’s empowerment and the history of the subcontinent.

With a focus on South Asian stories, language, and art, the SAFF was a much needed breath of fresh air in a city that often fails to recognize its diverse minority culture.

The festival opened with the screening of short film Mala, directed by Kaushik Roy. Set in modern day Kolkata, West Bengal, the story follows the adventures of an urban female protagonist torn between the prospects of an arranged marriage and her dream of being a filmmaker. The film follows an intertextual narrative that speaks largely to a Bollywood-loving audience with brief appearances by household names such as actors Deepika Padukone, Kalki Koechlin, and directors Rajkumar Hirani, Zoya Akhtar, among others.

The words of wisdom offered by celebrities from the glamorous film industry help the protagonist find her own voice in a reality where women are expected to sacrifice their career for marriage.

Albeit being restricted by poor acting, Mala delivers an inspirational message of empowerment.

The highlight of the opening night was Pan Nalin’s Angry Indian Goddesses, a complex story about the lives of contemporary women in India. The all-female cast play characters from different folds of life: a rich housewife, a social justice activist, a corporate boss, a rural maid, an international artist, and more. This film garnered high acclaims at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and many have called it the first Hindi cinema that depicts female love and bonding.

There is a preconceived notion that women-centred films will fair poorly with South Asian movie au-

Vaishnavi Kapil | Illustrator diences. Angry Indian Goddesses waited almost eight years for funding because producers thought a movie without any male characters would not be successful.

The SAFF was a much needed breath of fresh air in a city that often fails to recognize its diverse minority culture.

“The way women bond and the way they fight; the way friendships thrive among women – we haven’t seen that in Hindi cinema before,” said Pan Nalin, in a video recording that preceded the screening of his film. In addition to achieving commercial success, Angry Indian Goddesses challenges the idea that women cannot create their own narratives. It stands out in an industry that predominantly situates women as existing only in relation to men.

Nalin elaborated that he left space in the movie-making process for the actors to improvise their

characters in order to achieve a degree of authenticity that could not have been possible from a male writer’s perspective. By giving women the agency to determine how they are represented, Nalin is able to portray their lived experiences without resorting to stereotypes. As a result, the film manages to unfold the identity of the New South Asian Woman, which is enclosed by no particular binary. It celebrates the diversity and multiplicity that come with being a modern woman in the South Asian context.

Through vivid narration, the film illustrates the violently oppressive reality that surrounds women not only in India but across the subcontinent. The characters in the movie encounter gendered harassment in various forms – in a board room, on their way to the bazaar, or even within the context of a happy relationship. The different ways that South Asian women choose to deal with these situations have become a source of solidarity as well as critique in news headlines and dinner table debates.

The first day of SAFF concluded with a panel discussion on the conditions of a women’s empowerment movement in South Asia and the ethical aspects of vigilantism as a form of protest against the justice system. The second day explored

the different kinds of artistic and political spaces, imagined and physical, in South Asia. The short film, Spaces Between, documented Nikhil Chopra’s body art performance, La Perle Noir II: Aspinwall. In the performance, Chopra confines himself in a room on the banks of a river for fifty hours. “I am looking to create a persona that is confined to a space,” Chopra explains in the promotional trailer.

Spaces Between was followed

by Mara Ahmed’s documentary, A Thin Wall, on the 1947 Partition of India, which separated the British-occupied land into India and Pakistan. Shot on both sides of the border, the film is a personal take on the Partition, as Ahmed is a descendant of a family torn apart by this colonial legacy. A Thin Wall and Spaces Between both confront the material and immaterial relationships people have with their surroundings.

The later segment of the second day was woven through stories about language – or its absence – and celebrated the family bound by the South Asian codex, at home and abroad. The multitude of beautiful short films, such as Sanjog Heda’s Signal, Shamas Siddiqui’s Mia Kaal Aana, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Songs of Lahore, explored the diverse

mediums through which ideology was produced, communicated, and protested in South Asia. The festival closed on Sunday with local director Garry Bietel’s Cricket & Parc-Ex: Une Histoire d’Amour and Kaushik Ganguli’s feature film Cinemawala.

An array of thought-provoking films brought to the forefront the experiences of South Asian people all over the globe. However, this year’s festival also saw an underrepresentation of geographically smaller countries. There was only one film from Bangladesh, and none from Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal. The SAFF also focused mostly on Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali while leaving out widely spoken languages such as Telegu, Marathi, and Tamil.

Despite this shortcoming, the festival tried its best to cater to the homesickness of the diaspora while serving the purpose of engaging in productive discourse within Montreal. It was an opportunity for South Asians in Montreal to experience on-screen what they cannot expect in a downtown Cineplex.

The SAFF’s celebration of the diverse characters, concepts, stories, and more importantly, the language, music, and art were things that diasporic South Asians have been craving for a long time.

16

Culture

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Orientalism is

What are you going to do about

Coco Zhou | The McGill Daily Carly Gordon The McGill Daily

P

atrick Hansen, the Schulich School of Music’s Director of Opera Studies, is a commanding speaker– witty and at ease in front of an audience. He began his preopera lecture in the Strathcona Music Building’s narrow, crowded room with a nod to Opera McGill’s 60th anniversary, marked by this 2016-2017 season.

“Not many opera companies – let alone student opera companies – make it to sixty years,” he commended.

To celebrate, the company plans to present a season of exciting performances: in January, a gala production of Strauss’ lighthearted Die Fledermaus; in March, an Opera B!NGE Fest featuring seven different operas staged throughout Montreal.

Kicking off this celebratory season was

the November 5 opening of Handel’s magical opera Alcina, directed by Professor Hansen and performed by a stellar cast of Schulich students.

In his lecture, Hansen described not only Opera McGill’s anniversary milestone, but also his own: nine years ago, he began teaching at McGill. During that first year, he also directed Alcina.

Anniversaries are an opportunity not only to acknowledge the accomplishments of the past, but also to consider the potential for growth and achievement in the future. However, in 2016, Hansen chose to lead an Alcina that acknowledged only the company’s past: a “remounted” production featuring sets, costumes, lighting, and theatrical blocking nearly identical to his decade-old original.

The 2016 Alcina looked backward in more ways than one. Beyond Hansen’s ar-

rival at the Schulich School in 2007, and maybe beyond even Opera McGill’s 60-year history – all the way back to a time when racism, apparently, was okay.

That era, of course, is a fictional one.

Even back when society actively condoned racism – and, really, doesn’t it still? – there was nothing okay about it. Yet, it’s dangerously easy to let racism slide in an art form that is a product of a seemingly distant past.

“Opera is fraught with racism and sexism and all sorts of ‘-isms,’” Hansen stated in his lecture. “It’s part of history.”

Hansen’s attitude is not unique; the opera world is infamous for such passive dismissal of the problems inherent in its art.

Therefore, it’s time Hansen and his fellow opera directors get a stern talking-to: yes, racism and sexism and all the other “-isms” are part of history and part of opera; but what are you going to do about it?

Apparently, the answer to that question is: not much. Hansen’s Alcina was a cesspool of racist imagery: white singers in yellowface, appropriative costumes and Asian stereotypes concocted by white designers and directors. In the centre of the stage sat an enormous “Chinese coin” – a round, raised platform punctured by a square hole, and painted with supposedly Chinese script signifying the four points of a compass.

The singers stood on, around, and within the coin; faces painted powder-white, they wore kimonos and samurai armour as they gripped fans, swords, and parasols.

In his lecture, Hansen described this setting as “pan-Asian,” a phrase with a complex history tied to Japanese imperialism. In using this phrase, Hansen presents the continent of Asia in a false and demeaning light as housing a single, monolithic culture designed to feed the Western appetite for an exotic Other.

Culture

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

no magic

17

your racism, Opera McGill?

“Vincent [Lefèvre, set designer] is an acupuncturist and a kung fu black belt. I practice Buddhist meditation and tai chi,” Hansen explained in his lecture, as if these white men’s participation in Asian cultural activities bestows them with the laurels of authenticity and excuses them from accusations of appropriation.

As a further attempt at imbuing the production with some degree of Asian legitimacy, the singers received weekly training from the Taoist Tai Chi Centre of Montreal.

“There is a flow to tai chi […] that actually is quite helpful in Handel,” Hansen asserted in his lecture. “It’s a very disciplined way of learning.” He went on to equate the tai chi practice of “watching others move through space” with the task of staging an opera.

Hansen and his colleague’s pursuit of “authenticity” through these channels reflects an all-too-common pattern of racial fetishization. White people, whether Hansen realizes it or not, have oppressed, colonized, and traumatized people of colour for centuries. As such, the use of Asian cultural artefacts is implicitly loaded with vestiges of colonialism, with a white person objectifying, stereotyping, and fetishizing the cultural output of a marginalized community of colour.

Notably, the Asian setting of Hansen’s production is not central to the plot of Alcina, but rather is a deliberate choice made

by Hansen and the Opera McGill creative team. When George Frideric Handel com-

posed Alcina in 1735, he based its plot on sections of a 16th-century epic poem set on an island ambiguously “east of India.” Inhabiting this island is the titular character, a powerful sorceress who enchants men to fall in love with her only to transform them into trees, stones, and wild beasts when she grows bored of their affections. The geography of the island, then, is not nearly as important as its mystical qualities – qualities which Hansen consciously opted to ascribe to a stark, exotic “Orient.”

Outstanding performances by the Schulich School’s talented opera students were overshadowed by these threads of exoticism and appropriation. Soprano Megan Miceli sparkled in the role of Morgana, a lovesick sorceress and sister to Alcina. Her breathtaking aria “Ama, sospira” – joined

by Marie Nadeau-Tremblay’s insolent, agile violin solo – contrasted with the small, dainty steps with which she walked to comedic effect (the audience laughed every time she shuffled offstage).

Hansen’s decision to use physical comedy to portray a delicate, submissive Asian woman reeks of fetishization. It further perpetuates a racialized and gendered trope that runs rampant across art forms and reduces East Asian women to a demeaning stereotype.

Baritone Igor Mostovoi sang a stiff yet successful Melisso, a wizard and mentor to

the opera’s protagonist, Prince Ruggiero.

Mostovoi’s role was only disappointing in comparison to his absolutely stunning performance as Bhaer in Opera McGill’s 2015 Little Women. However, Mostovoi’s costume constituted “Fu Manchu” attire – the moustache, hat, robes, and staff which Hansen insisted in his lecture were inspired by Gandalf, but in fact evoked the racist classic Hollywood trope, created in an era of increasing hostility toward East Asian people in North America.

Another standout was mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh as Prince Ruggiero, a warrior trapped on Alcina’s island and under her love spell, despite being betrothed to the warrior princess Bradamante (played by a stoic and regal Veronica Algie). Fresh off winning first prize in the Canadian Opera Company’s illustrious Ensemble Studio Competition only two days before Alcina’s opening night, McIntosh sang with a spellbinding intensity, exacting an earnest chemistry with her co-star Algie. However, the broad panelled sleeves of Ruggiero’s robe comprised what Hansen described vaguely in his lecture as “sort of a fanciful, martial-artsy kimono,” and a slash of prominent red eye makeup across Ruggiero’s brow evoked Japanese kabuki theatre.

Alcina is actually a complex and subversive opera all on its own, interrogating layers

of queerness and upending gender roles with no need for fancy sets or staging. McIntosh, for instance, crossdressed as a character historically reserved for a high-voiced male castrato singer. Meanwhile, a subplot sees Morgana fall head-over-heels for Princess Bradamante, who is disguised as her brother Ricciardo in order to mount a rescue mission for her bewitched fiancé Ruggiero.

Hansen emphasized this narrative in his lecture. “Alcina [is] full of powerful women,” he said.

Unfortunately, these currents of subversion were lost in a larger scheme of appropriation, orientalism, and patent disrespect for a marginalized community.

In needlessly imagining Alcina’s island as Other – foreign, exotic, and imbued with magic, mystery, and illusion – Hansen in fact subjugated the opera’s legitimately dissident intricacies beneath an aesthetic that proved loaded and problematic from every possible angle.

Opera McGill has a lot to celebrate in its sixtieth season, but its Alcina merits interrogation as a perpetuation of the operatic genre’s pervasive racist norms. With a cast of young, innovative, and passionate voices on the precipice of professional careers, it’s time for Opera McGill and its leadership to turn away from the genre’s historically oppressive practices, and look ahead toward thoughtful, purposeful, and compassionate interpretations of a problematic art form. Only then can we raise our glasses and say in earnest, here’s to another sixty years.

Border by Taylor Mitchell

EDITORIAL

Volume 106 Issue 11

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Bill 62 is Islamophobia disguised as secularism

Q

uebec’s National Assembly is currently debating Bill 62, “An Act to foster adherence to State religious neutrality,” which would prohibit any person with their face covered from working in the public sector or receiving public services, including medical care in public hospitals and clinics. The bill is framed as protecting the government’s ‘religious neutrality,’ but is clearly yet another instance of the rhetoric of secularism disguising discriminatory legislation, in this instance targeting Muslim women who wear the niqab. The Liberals’ vocal opposition to the infamous “Quebec Charter of Values” – which proposed to prohibit public sector employees from wearing “conspicuous religious symbols” – helped them rise to power, yet they are now proposing a measure which is also clearly Islamophobic and racist. Bill 62 must not pass, and we should call it what it is: a bill that targets Muslim women and validates Islamophobic sentiments in Canada and Quebec.

Bill 62 is part of Quebec’s ongoing resistance to ‘reasonable accommodation,’ a legal principle which mandates that adjustments be made to institutions and businesses to accommodate individuals with a proven need. While originally intended for people with disabilities, the term has since come to encompass a wide scope of accommodations, including religious ones. Businesses and services are exempt only if they can prove that providing accommodations will cause them undue financial hardship. The Quebec government has the ability to accommodate people who cover their faces at little to no extra cost; its refusal to do so demonstrates deeply entrenched xenophobia and a continuation of forced assimilation.

Bill 62 is just the provincial government’s latest attempt to have all its residents conform to the domi-

nant white Catholic culture in Quebec. In 2007, in one manifestation of the trickle-down effect of the Quebec government’s rhetoric, the town of Hérouxville created a “code of conduct” for potential new immigrants, which stated that “the lifestyle that [immigrants] left behind in their birth country cannot be brought here.”

More recently, in May 2016, Outremont’s borough council banned the construction of new places of worship on certain main streets in the neighborhood. While not specifying any religious community in particular, the ban was effectively an attack on Outremont’s substantial Hasidic Jewish population.

Legislation that drastically restricts the ability of religious minorities to express their faith is not only unjustifiable, but furthers intolerance and discrimination toward communities that already face these issues. Incidents of Islamophobia – particularly those targeting women – spiked dramatically in the wake of France’s ban on veils that cover the face. Just this year, when several French cities banned burkinis, footage of Muslim women being publicly humiliated for their religious expression went viral.

As white supremacy becomes more explicit and mainstream, the last thing we need is more toxic legislation targeting religious minorities. We call on the Quebec government to oppose Bill 62, and to take measures to protect religious minorities and other communities experiencing heightened violence and prejudice at this time. We must stand with Muslim women, who will be directly impacted by this bill, and with all those facing institutionalized discrimination.

—The McGill Daily editorial board

Errata “Queer issues on campus forum,” November 14, News, page 5, quoted Dr. Lynn Kozak out of context with regard to statements about Kozak’s department. The quote has since been removed from the article to avoid misinterpretation. The Daily regrets the error.

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Compendium!

November 21, 2016 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

19

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