femilicious.com

Forget asking how did people write before word processors — how did people ever write without hyperlinking? I’m going crazy trying to write my final essay of the semester without hyperlinks. Aaarrrggghhhh!!!

It would be so sweet to go beyond footnotes, to be able to include a link to a photo or a text or a discussion or another essay. Alas, when your professor is a historian of print and publishing it just ain’t gonna be happenin’ here.

When did a B become a bad mark? (omg I hope I don’t get a B on my assignment.) It seems this is what happens moving up into graduate studies. Everyone is stressing over grades. Nothing below an A is good enough and a B is required to pass a course. I hate having that kind of pressure. I did well in my undergrad but even though I stressed over my grades I don’t remember this kind of dread. In my undergrad I wanted high marks but I didn’t need them in the same way I do now. Knowing that good work is a fail and that very good is barely a pass I am paralyzed for fear that my work will be mediocre — or worse — adequate.

There’s been some weird power flickers here today and my desktop keeps shutting down. If it wasn’t happening to the clocks on that side of the house as well as to Rob’s desktop I might wonder if my power supply has finally given up. Since the machine is off anyway I’ve decided I should let things cool down and take this opportunity to replace that power supply. I bought my new one – a 430W Seasonic – at Canada Computers when I was in Toronto last weekend for Mitch’s birthday shindig. The visit with K & Mitch was wonderful, the staff at the computer shop helpful, the curried vegetables at King’s Cafe were amazing but the stress from almost missing the train home because I miscalculated how long the Spadina street car would take to get to Union Station…gulp…that I could have done without.

So anyway, can you tell when blogger-students have papers due? There’s always a flurry of posts. Instead of writing the assignment, we blog. Or maybe blogging is the warm up? To prove to ourselves that we can still put words together and we may as well write the ones our professors want to read instead of the ones that make our significant others/friends/families wonder if we’re/they’re really going to survive our education.

I hate limbo. I like to have a general idea of where I’m headed, what’s next, where the groceries will come from next week. So I’m getting anxious because I haven’t heard yet if I’ll receive the funding I applied for to finish my master’s. I had planned to do this degree in one year but when all hell broke loose last fall I had to rethink that timeline. Now I’m sitting here, in need of two more courses and a major research project but funding for only one more semester. There are no courses offered in the summer so if I really and truly don’t receive funding I need an alternate plan. I’m considering taking a leave of absence, gearing up, and finishing everything in the fall somehow (umm, just as my daughter begins high school. Sounds like fun). It would be nuts — more work than I’ve probably ever attempted to tackle. School at this level just doesn’t mix with family. Or at least it hasn’t for me yet. Generally I feel like I’m barely keeping up so the thought of adding more school responsibilities on top of what I had these past two semesters really worries me.

The challenge then becomes how to support my family this summer — oh right, while finishing up my incompletes from last fall. Aarrgh… This degree has certainly not worked out like I thought it would. I dream of a simple life where during the day I go to class, go to the library, think about Big Ideas and write with clarity and grace. Nights are filled with deep films and philosophy and sangria. I go to the gym and eat salad with blueberries. On the weekends I code amazing and tidy projects that combine all of my diverse interests so that when school is all over I have a career path to pursue. A few months like that and everything is caught up, my soul is richer than it’s ever been, and the degree is complete. Sweee-eeet.

Of course, maybe a letter will come today saying I’ve got the funding and I can just keep on going as I’d planned. Then there’s no decision to make.

Last night I attended a talk held at the University of Windsor given by Dr. Shahnaz Khan. The topic of the presentation was entitled: Veil Talk: Examining the Many Facets. Dr. Khan is the author of Aversion and Desire; Negotiating Muslim Female Identity in the Diaspora and a professor in Global Studies and Women’s Studies at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

As she was discussing how the veil takes many forms and waiting for some technology to catch up with the presentation she took questions from the audience. A man criticized her for confusing all these Westerners. He said that what she was showing the group were not in fact veils, that there was a difference between veils and head coverings. He told her that He Would Now Teach Her That Difference.

It was an unbelievably arrogant and dismissive comment. Dr. Kahn is an expert in her field. She has written and lectured on this topic for many years. She had just finished describing and showing pictures of some of the many ways women veil and explaining that where a woman lives has much to do with the form the veil takes and that there are many reasons why a woman veils. She showed pictures of hijab, niqab, burka, obaya and chador and as all are used to cover a woman’s body they come under the category of veiling. She discussed the relationship between veiling and class — in the past, veiling beyond a head covering for protection from the sun — worn by both men and women — was practiced by upper class women. Those involved in physical labour were unable to work effectively with their movement restricted. We were much too polite to him. Instead of telling him where to go we rolled our eyes at each other, grimaced, and groaned. The idea of waiting for one person to finish talking before speaking should have been replaced with heckles and boos.

A few minutes later another man criticized her for not taking the talk to a different level — that we need to go beyond the talk she gave. Her response was that his idea is a different talk than the one she gave — an idea for another day. Judging by the number of people in the room who turned up for her presentation I’d say there was an interest in the talk that was presented. Not to say there isn’t more to say — but we have to start somewhere.

The first man tried taking the floor a second time at the end of the presentation but the moderator cut him short with her closing remarks — several times. This man did not want to stop — he was determined to re-educate the group. Dr. Kahn handled it all beautifully. It looked as though she’d dealt with this before.

Some of us were saying that it was really wonderful that these men turned up to tell us how to talk about women’s bodies. Because, you know, how could women do that on their own?

flickr photo by aymanshamma

I want to go to this very very badly. I could even say it’s for school! And for people who like to take pictures/pictures of birds this is the perfect opportunity!

More details here.

Seeing as how Vincent Lam’s book about history and medicine (on my way to pick it up at the library now!) is totally connected to my research project and the event is on Pelee Island, don’t you think I should totally go? Do you think anyone would want to go with me? I know the perfect b&b too and it might not even be full yet…

Next week I have to hand in a comprehensive annotated bibliography for my major research project. I’m finding out there are trickier citations to write than books with editors but no authors, self-published books and websites with hidden authors. Until now these have been the toughest. Now I’m finding I need to cite primary sources including birth and death records and personal interviews. Or at least I’ll be doing this before I’m done.

Here’s what I’ve found so far in case this is useful to anyone or if anyone has any better source that might be helpful to me:

Most of the citation tips are coming from genealogy websites like this one. Here are their examples for Vital Records:

Death Certificate for Jacob F. Rost, 24 September 1924, File No. 28093, Missouri State Board of Health. Certified copy in possession of author.

Certificate of Marriage, Edward H. Wigal to Velma G. King, 12 June 1912, Wood County, West Virginia. County Recorder’s Office, Parkersburg, West Virginia. Copy in possession of Kelly Collier, Arlington, Texas.

From about.com I found these instructions and examples for Birth & Death Certificates:

When citing a birth or death record, record 1) type of record and name(s) of the individual(s), 2) the file or certificate number (or book and page) and 3) name and location of the office in which it is filed (or the repository in which the copy was found – e.g. archives).

1. Certified transcription of birth certificate for Ernest Rene Ollivon, Act no. 7145 (1989), Maison Maire, Crespières, Yvelines, France.

2. Henrietta Crisp, birth certificate [long form] no. 124-83-001153 (1983), North Carolina Division of Health Services – Vital Records Branch, Raleigh.

3. Elmer Koth entry, Gladwin County Deaths, Liber 2: 312, no 96, County Clerk’s Office, Gladwin, Michigan.

From an online index:
4. Ohio Death Certificate Index 1913-1937, The Ohio Historical Society, online , Death certificate entry for Eveline Powell downloaded 12 March 2001.

From a FHL microfilm:
5. Yvonne Lemarie entry, Crespières naissances, mariages, déecs 1893-1899, microfilm no. 2067622 Item 6, frame 58, Family History Library [FHL], Salt Lake City, Utah.

I’m not sure yet which and how many records I’ll end up using in the project. I’m still looking for a style guide that tells me how to cite the archive of vital records without naming a specific record. Maybe something like about.com’s #4 above.

flickr photo by rhonamccallum

Today is Family Day in Ontario. It’s a government initiative to help families with the crazy pace of life by giving everyone the day off so they can spend time together.

Except Family Day isn’t retrospectively applied to court orders signed before today. If your kids go to their dad’s on Mondays you are out of luck. Unless you want to go back to court…(Hah!)

And for the many people living in border towns and working in Michigan and other states, Family Day doesn’t apply to you. Get the kids to the sitter and get yourself to work already!

And if you work in retail, hospital, or at the university library you and some of your co-workers will be at work today.

And if you work for the school board and your contract was negotiated before Family Day was announced, you cannot go to work today but you will not get paid. You’re not entitled to any more days off this year. Sorry!

And if you’re a student, you’re busy preparing for mid-terms and writing major papers so keep in mind, if you take the day off today, you will probably FAIL!

But I’m not bitter.

Want to know what to do for your Valentine this year?

Call Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s Minister of Education and ask when the already promised Women’s and Gender Studies course will be added into the Ontario Secondary School Curriculum.

Kathleen Wynne’s Office: 416.325.2600
TDD/TTY: 1-800-263-2892

Today, February 14th 2008, between 9 and 5, pick up the phone and help stop sexual harassment.

Touching, grabbing, gang-style rape. These are just some of the incidents revealed in the Falconer Report. Sexual and gender-based violence is reaching epidemic-levels.

According to the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health:

“four percent of males in grade 11 admitted trying to force someone to have sex with them, while 10 percent of males and 27 percent of females admitted being pressured into doing something sexual that they did not want to. Not surprisingly, the data shows that girls are feeling this pressure more than boys, with 15 percent reporting that they had oral sex just to avoid having intercourse.” Is this okay with you?

Here’s more from the Miss G_ Project for Equity in Education:

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Please join us in our most crucial campaign yet!

“No More Miss Nice G__” is a phone calling campaign taking place on February 14, 2008. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! We are asking all supporters of the project to call the Ministry of Education expressing that we cannot afford to wait any longer for a Women’s and Gender Studies course to be added into the Ontario Secondary School Curriculum.

**** Calling the Ministry of Education is absolutely not as stressful nor as intimidating as it may sound. In fact, you are a citizen and it is the Ministry’s job to listen to you and to take your calls.

PHONE #s:
Kathleen Wynne’s Office: 416.325.2600
TDD/TTY: 1-800-263-2892

WHEN: between 9am – 5pm Thursday, February 14 (If that doesn’t work for you, anytime is better than never).

WHAT TO EXPECT: This number will take you directly to Kathleen’s office, where her assistant will either pick up, or you will be put through to her assistant’s voicemail. You can leave a personal message or voicemail recording for her assistant to pass on to Minister Wynne.

WHAT TO SAY: Identify who you are and where you are from. State that you are leaving a message for the Minister of Education, Kathleen Wynne, and express your support for a Women’s and Gender Studies course being implemented into the Ontario Secondary School Curriculum. Ask when Minister Wynne will honour her promises and policy-commitments to introduce WGS into the provincial curriculum. (There are more ideas for things to say below.)
—> Bonus points: Talk about a personal experience that proves to you why addressing this issue is so important and urgent.

WHAT TO REMEMBER: You are fabulous and intelligent, you have an opinion, and your voice needs to be listened to!

If you have any questions or need any encouragement, do not hesitate to leave a post or to contact themissgproject@gmail.com.

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JUST THE FACTS MA’ME
(or, why would I want to do this anyway?)
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FACT: The recently released “Falconer Report” found that sexual assault and sexual harassment are alarmingly prevalent in Toronto schools and the authors recommended that the Toronto District School Board should “develop a sexual assault and gender-based violence policy” and partner with community agencies to provide services for women and girls experience violence. (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/292869)

FACT: All students, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, deserve to go to school in a safe environment. In fact, government policy guarantees “all students… a safe and secure environment so that they can participate fully and responsibly in the educational experience.”

FACT: In response to the Falconer report, Minister Wynne stated, “we know prevention is better than reaction,” and speaks frequently in support of “inclusive learning environments.”

FACT: A women’s and gender studies course in high schools — which the Miss G Project has been working with the government to implement for the last 3 years — would be one highly effective way of creating that inclusive learning environment and preventing sexual assault and harassment THROUGH EDUCATION. From the experiences of teachers and students taking locally developed WGS courses across the province, we know that opening up a space for dialogue and providing information on issues of gender-based violence and harassment is an effective and desperately needed way of addressing and PREVENTING injustices occurring in schools.

FACT: A Women’s and Gender studies course would address issues of sexism, homophobia, gender roles, violence and harassment as well as infuse information about women’s history, writing and experiences into the curriculum (which it is now sorely lacking).

FOR MORE INFO ABOUT WGS, visit…
“Why Women’s & Gender Studies in High Schools?” and
“Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about WGS”

No More Miss Nice G__!!!

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The Shameless blog has put together a bit of a script to help:

RING THE MINISTRY’S BELL: Some ways to have your say.

The best message is one straight from your heart (wink), but if you’re like many of us and prefer a prepared message, may we suggest some of the following:

“Hello, my name is____, and I’m a [student, parent, teacher, concerned citizen, etc.] from ____, and…

… I would like to leave a message for Minister Wynne asking when a WGS course will be implemented in the Ontario secondary school curriculum.”

… I am getting tired of waiting for a WGS course to be introduced to the provincial curriculum.”

… I wish that i had had WGS when i was in high school, and hope that future generations will have the knowledge to make better decisions and oppose oppressions.”

… I am tired of the gender-based injustice that goes on in schools and believe a WGS course would be an effective form of prevention.”

No need to ask, I’m still not all that engaged in my school work. At least I’m crying less this term.

I had to present a statement of my research project this week. (For those who forget or are tuning in mid-journey, I’m looking at something about childbirth on Pelee Island in Southern Ontario in the early twentieth century. Think isolated, no hospital, women all giving birth 30+ kilometres over water by boat or plane by 1950.)

This week, we were required to draft a one-page statement describing the research focus/question and discuss one relevant historiographical work on the topic. I had a really hard time with it. I keep changing my research question, trying to tune it into something that will be useful to me after this degree is over. I also need it to be something very interesting (to me) so that I can keep with it for the next half a year or so. And it must be feminist. Once I’ve begun it will be difficult to change and a very large number of words will need to be written about it. I’m finding it hard to do something history (maybe since my background is Women’s Studies?) that will translate outside the academy afterwards. Assuming I will be leaving the academy afterward. If I stay in, I don’t know what discipline I’ll land in. I need something with some transferability.

So, still playing with my general topic of childbirth on Pelee, I thought, instead of looking at the physiologic/medical process of childbirth and how that changed maybe I could look at the communities of mothers on the Island, and how that changed. Maybe something about women and community and the influence of a patriarchal medical model of childbirth on the larger community of Island women/Islanders.

The thing that ties me to this project is the anticipation I have of talking to the women about their lives. There are a handful of these mothers who are the age my grandmother would be if she was still alive. Women who have had incredible lives and their history is unrecorded. I presented a research statement on this idea but it was lousy. My heart is obviously not in it and it’s hard to be passionate when you aren’t really present. I fumbled for words to talk about it, the interest from others was poor, my own interest weak.

So now I’m thinking back to what it is that gets me excited about a project. I realized that it’s when I believe in the purpose of what I’m doing. When there’s learning involved or sharing, or building connections. When I believe that what I’m doing is important on a larger scale, when it goes beyond myself. When I believe that what I’m doing is going to make a difference.

I don’t believe that writing a 40-60 page paper is going to make a difference in anyone’s life. I think it’s important history that deserves recording, but to have it sit on a shelf in the university library? What’s the point of that? Is this merely an act in methods and discipline? /sigh/ For many, that answer is yes. It’s a stepping stone to a PhD program or to a job in government policy or else teacher’s college or ?? History is too often done in isolation, buried in the archives, with findings published intermittently in journals. Not always, but this is the way of the Ivory Tower.

I want to make a connection. I want what I want to do to matter. I have another idea now — and maybe it could work. It bridges History and Women’s Studies/Activism but what did they expect from me, really?

I know a little girl who yells a lot.

She fights with passion (and volume). The last really big one I overheard got me to feeling jealous. I was startled by my reaction — usually I just try and block out the noise and hold tight until it’s over (and then take something for the headache). But the last time, there was no where else to go. The sound followed me to basement and garage and since I couldn’t get away I figured at least I may as well be in my office where I could try and do some work.

I have no idea what the fight was about. It’s not important. What was significant was that this young person felt she’d been dealt an injustice and she wasn’t going to accept it. Listening to her go back and forth it was obvious that she held a different position, believed in her position, believed the other person would listen to her and consider her position, and believed that she could make a difference and thereby change her future.

There is an incredible amount of hope in her position. Maybe because she is young, maybe because of who she is, maybe because she hasn’t yet had that hope taken away. Maybe something else. I think a lot of women gave up that hope a long time ago. Too many years of being disrespected, being told we were not entitled to a voice, position, power. Compounded by messages of being a ‘proper lady’ and which of us has a chance?

The tag line to the Women’s Studies undergrad program I finished last year is “find your voice”. I don’t think I really found my voice — or if I did I’ve lost it already. Being assertive requires confidence that your position is valid and believing that you will be heard. Constructing a strong argument can be learned in school, but trust? Not likely.