Actiongirls

heh everyone!

I just wonder if anyone else going to the RAD defence class?!

Women’s Studies Party

This Wednesday, October 4th, there will be a drop-in social for and student enrolled in a Women’s Studies Course (course numbers beginning with 53) at Sunset Bar and Café from 12-3pm. Come by for snacks and fun and find out more about the student mentoring program.

For more information, contact Samantha at peters.samantha@gmail.com

Get The Troops Out of Afghanistan

Actiongirls has been invited by the Marxist/Leninist Society to attend a meeting on Monday, October 2nd to talk about Canada’s involvement in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan

Did you miss this week’s meeting? Here’s the highlights!

1. Radical Cheerleading
• A tentative rehearsal has been been scheduled for Friday, October 6th at 2:30pm, location TBA.
• There will be two performances, the first at Take Back the Night on Saturday, October 14th and the second at the Distinguished Visitor dinner on Thursday, October 19th.
• On the night of the 14th, a shuttle will depart Vanier Hall at 7pm to take participants to the march.

2. Transamerica Screening
• Directed by Duncan Tucker and starring Desperate Housewives’ Felicity Huffman, this film is the story of a pre-operative male-to-female transsexual who takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she fathered a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.

The next planning meeting will be Wednesday September 27 at 12:15, upstairs at the Sunset CafeBar (formerly the Grad House).

Actiongirls is getting charged for another exciting year.

So far we've got:

• "Radical Cheerleading" at this fall's Take Back the Night event

and

• "In Labour" - another original fine art spectacle (theatre, music, visual art, dance - you name it) in conjunction with the Labour Arts Festival (call for submissions and helpers coming soon).

There are also several smaller events and one too big to squeeze into text so come to the meeting!

If you are interested in working on any of these or have ideas for other events please come and join us:

next Wednesday September 20 at 12:15
Upstairs at the Sunset Cafe (formerly known as the Grad House)
Everyone is welcome.

Check it out:

Women's Studies presents a one-woman show written & performed by Leslie McCurdy

Things My Fore-Sisters Saw

Tuesday 19 September 2006
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Katzman Lounge, Vanier Hall
University of Windsor

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please call 519-253-3000 ext. 2315 or e-mail womenst@uwindsor.ca

Welcome back all and I hope you're ready for more action this year.

Our first event is already set for next week, Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 12 noon. It's another of our popular mind stretchers, in the form of a picnic discussion on the grass by the Memorial of Hope in front of Dillon Hall. The topic for discussion this time is:

"Feminists, Bra Burners, Man Haters, and Women's Studies Students:
what's the same and what's the difference?"

If it's raining, please go to the Women's Studies office in Chrysler Hall South rm 250-2.

Everyone is welcome to attend this event. Hope you can make it and see you there!

Here's some info from the Miss G Project about their upcoming Read-In on June 6th at Queen's Park, Toronto at 11 a.m.

Anyone wishing to carpool from Windsor can send an email to missg @ femilicious.com.

Here's the info from their website:

Feminist Read-In
for the Miss G___ Project

06.06.06 - 11AM - Queen's Park, Toronto
On June 6th, you and yours are cordially invited to the very big, very bold "Feminist Read-In" at Queen's Park in Toronto. Be there at 11 a.m. and head out whenever the music stops or the sun goes down.

What's a Read-In you ask? Imagine your typical sit-in, but without the force-feeding and free love. Supporters of the project from everywhere and anywhere are invited to join us on the front lawn of Queen's Park to demonstrate for change and to show the government what we want to see in education -- feminist and queer-positive literature, and women's histories.

Bring your books, your blankies, your friends and family. We want hundreds -- nay, thousands there! The day will be complete with solidarity-enhancing entertainment to dazzle the eye and warm the heart, including musical performances (more details on that to come), poetry readings (such as from most fabulous up-and-comer Tanis Rideout), and book readings by some of the women authors who matter to us. It will be the fabulous, feminist, education-focused, all-ages, geek-chic, refined but riotous, irreverent-to-the-bone Woodstock of our times.

Teachers, now is the time to start making arrangements for field trips. Students, now is the time to start bugging your teachers to start making arrangements for field trips.

If you're part of an organization (Women's, education, advocacy, labour union, etc.), please let your like-minded colleagues know and winkle a day-off out of your boss (and if you are the boss, declare June 6 'Feminist Activism Day' and release your employees into the streets, with a banner from your group in hand).

Everyone else, now is the time to start spreading the word like a highly contagious infection your mother used to warn you about. Below you can download posters and flyers advertising the event for your printing and posting needs. Please print and post. Everywhere.

Also, we know we planted the June 1 date in your heads, but due to plot-twists beyond our control (down on the QP end), we've had to move the Big Day back a bit. Unforeeable, but so it goes. If "one" was the number in your head before, please replace it now with "six."

Go shout it from the rooftops: Patriarchy beware. Miss G__ is coming. See you on the sixth!

God Sleeps in Rwanda

a film by Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman
2004, 28 minutes
Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Short

Thursday April 13, 2006
Education Rm 1101
12 noon

The 1994 Rwandan Genocide left the country nearly 70 percent female, handing Rwanda’s women an extraordinary burden and an unprecedented opportunity.

Girls are attending school in record numbers, and women now make up a large part of the country’s leadership. Working with two cameras and no crew except for their translator—a genocide survivor herself—the filmmakers uncover incredible stories. Heart-wrenching and inspiring, this powerful film is a brutal reminder of the consequences of the Rwandan tragedy, and a tribute to the strength and spirit of those who are moving forth.

Sponsored by Actiongirls and 53-390 Third Wave Feminisms

For more information contact actiongirls@femilicious.com

women make movies: films by and about women
www.wmm.com

Background:

In recent weeks, posters could be seen all over Windsor, Ontario, claiming that three women were Missing. The posters included photographs of three local women, along with their names, ages and identifying features, but were not in fact a Missing persons report or alert and instead were an advertisement calling for a mock ‘Search Party’ at a downtown nightclub to ‘celebrate’ a local band’s single and video release there.

The three women featured on the Missing poster are actually actors in the band’s video. Both the poster campaign and video were created by a media consultancy company in Windsor, Mimetic
Productions.

The video featured at the release party, is made in the genre of a snuff film – the women featured in the Missing posters are each violently kidnapped, and held captive, bound and gagged in a basement. Each woman represents a former girlfriend of the lead vocalist, and he blames each for his present mental state. He attempts to possess them, stroking and fondling them while they are terrified and physically captive and restrained, unable to defend themselves or escape. Following this torture, he leaves and a heavy steel door slams. He leaves the women to their fates – death from starvation and dehydration. As he leaves, we see the man carrying a rose for his next victim.

An awareness campaign was launched in Windsor soon after discovering this Missing poster marketing gimmick and its association with a violent misogynist video. This campaign – launched by a local feminist collective Actiongirls – aims to highlight the reality of missing women and the role of media violence in perpetuating the victimization of women. This reality is callously disregarded in this advertising campaign and video.

Actions so far have included a march at night through Windsor’s nightclub district, with a small group of women activists carrying noisemakers and signs protesting profit from tragedy, media violence against women and calling for ethics in advertising. This march was met by a small counter-protest. Two women from Actiongirls were also interviewed on local CBC television news (Friday, 10 February, 2006).

The backlash:

Activists from Actiongirls have been continually harassed since their campaign against these fake Missing posters and the video began. Continual attempts are being made to intimidate us and silence our protest – whether in the form of letters to the University of Windsor hierarchy (the group is based on campus) alleging that protest activity is slanderous and calling for Actiongirls to be reprimanded; or in the form of derogatory online anti-feminist backlash; or ingenuous and insulting plays at placation – for example, coffee and cake with the director of the video! We do NOT take candy from strangers,

and

WE WILL NOT BE SILENT!

The kidnapping, beating, rape, torture, and killing of women is a real horror – one that should not be exploited for profit by anyone. With more than 500 Aboriginal women missing in Canada alone, and thousands of women kidnapped for use in the sex trade or worse, the use of an advertising campaign depicting women as falsely Missing is a dismissal of real pain and terror. Depicting this pain and terror in a music video goes further to justify the continuance of violence against women and especially to justify this kind of treatment of women by men.

THIS ISSUE IS BIGGER THAN
ONE SMALL CITY,
ONE VIDEO
PRODUCED BY
ONE COMPANY.

What can you do to support this activism against media violence and the use of missing women as a marketing tool?

• Contact the company and tell them what you think of their Actions:
  Mimetic Productions:1677 Albert Road, Windsor,
  Ontario, N8Y 3R4; Fax: 519-254-3904;
  email gavin@mimeticonline.com
• Contact MuchMusic and voice your concerns about the gratuitous depiction of violence against women in this video before the video is added to their rotation:

  Craig Halket, Senior Music Programmer,
  Much Music, 299 Queen Street West,
  Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2Z5; Fax: 416-
  591-6824; email:
  craigh@muchmusic.com

• Contact your local media outlets to alert them to our awareness campaign and the subsequent attempts to silence it, or contact The Windsor Star, who continues to support this company and refuses to publish community complaints:
  The Windsor Star Group Inc., 167 Ferry
  Street, Windsor, Ontario, N9A 4M5; Fax:
  519-255-5515; email:
  letters@thestar.canwest.com
• Come out and join us for a march to express community solidarity in opposition to media violence, violence against women and profiting off REAL missing women!

  We will not be silent!

  Saturday March 25th, 2006
  6pm
  Dieppe Park
  (corner of Riverside Drive and Ouellette)
  Windsor, Ontario

• Create anchor text on your own site or blog that links Mimetic Productions to this post. Use this code if you want a quick and easy cut and paste:
  

  <p>Media Violence Against Women Must End! What you should know about <em><a href="http://www.femilicious.com/blog/2006/03/08/missing/" title="We will not be silenced">Mimetic Productions</a></em>.</p>

For more information contact: Actiongirls@femilicious.com