me just barely touch the good morning welcome to changes the program on sustainability i'm susan gregory and today we have marjorie stuart with us in our studio good morning mar particularly want to touch on and not be intimidated by some clashes issues is the question of the worldwide violence against women and cindy and why don't you just kick it off and tell us a little bit about the kind of issues women who have been dealing with domestic violence and then imo experience oh look a pretty broad broad question i mean there is that women the women that we that we have the transition after the women that we work with their programs and services are facing you know in terms of violence in their lives and that violence is it is not only physical but it can there's cultural violence or cultural issues that need to be taken into consideration when you're dealing with violence against women or domestic violence within the within the structure still we see a lot of that at the transition i would say so i think that there is a lot of pressure on women to conform with it you know within within their culture there are things that are accepted within a culture and things that aren't accepted  they're you know they can be a very kind of closed society and so you know it's not viewed favorable for people to look beyond their community chris support sometimes those communities in very close knit communities and so therefore it's difficult for women to have conversations or to find a support system that would be sympathetic and and supportive of their particular or they feel that would be sympathetic were supportive  somehow they're responsible for it and they're not doing a good job they're not being a good partner they're not being as if there isn't you know really taking on a lot of blame and so to expose that within within their culture it could prove to be difficult and maybe even dangerous well let's talk about the sense of some stupid showing up on the hill you see a lot of students of different backgrounds different ages what's your feeling about the sense of safety from violence well i think many of the women in my classes feel that they can bring it up in the context of discussion within a subject and particularly in women's studies courses or a level study english creative writing media studies and humanities where i work there may be other classes where a less favorable a subject to bring up but i find that they do use i have a lot of confidence in the counseling services on campus and they do understand that they should be walking together or leaving a class in the evening on campus for safety there is security on campus and numbers that they can call but we also have a lot of issues that transfer beyond the campus certainly we did a special initiative around frosh week to make sure that new students in particular weren't vulnerable women weren't able in the bars in where we've had a very high incidence of drink spiking and trying to give them some safety tips in terms of watching their drink watching it being poured making sure that they're not alone leaving it alone with somebody they don't know well making sure that everyone knows where they are and where they're leaving to at the end of the night and that they feel safe and protected in those choices so we do try to to you know attack the issues that are attacking them unfortunately that's a strong word to use but i think many of the young girls and women on our campuses are coming from smaller communities where might be a big city and they're unaware of some of the challenges here maybe a little bit naive and or just excited to be at school and not thinking about safety first so we try to make sure that they're aware of all the services here including haven in the women's center and many of our other partners in the community i'm just want to comment historically  more i think that there has always been unfortunately a preference of violence to against women we have seen statistics to suggest that it's escalating particularly in certain communities we have seen a tolerance for it that is intolerable to us as as women as as humans men and women working on this subject and i think it's good that we're talking about it more and that it's a subject that more people are aware of in their communities i guess transferring that awareness to action is what international women's day is in part about i mean it's really a celebration of the strides women have made around the world in various ways not only for pay equity and on safety issues and issues to do with control over their bodies but it's also an opportunity to say how much for that the struggle has to go and i think some of the things we'll talk about in the show today will indicate that but i certainly hope that there is more action on this front from everybody who sees that and at the moment may be aware of it does and i think i hope we can move people forward to action don't know what you would like to comment on  know i think that we're doing the best that we do that we were able to do given their resources as we said we were earlier in the piece we've been doing this for a number of years we are considered one of the leading an organization and in the city we work very closely with your community partners to ensure that a full array of services are provided we work closely with the women's resource center we you know are often  is for women who identify as fleeing violence and we're able to do that for a period of time as well as connecting with other support services are we doing enough i think there's always more to do i think there's more education that needs to happen and we need to be more inclusive inclusive in terms of involving folks in the community and in the work that we're doing and making them aware of the issues that women and you know it's really hard to find out the housing that fits within one's economic circumstances particularly when you're a single a single woman leaving an abusive relationship with your children and next to nothing the counseling services we we have a full service counseling women's counseling program but we also have huge waitlist and that speaks to the lack of resources that are set limits ones ability to access to services that they need outreach are we have a reach services we have one outreach worker at this point in time who traditionally carries anywhere from thirty to thirty five women on her case loom that town are actively seeking community based services are community victim services programs on which help women deal with with legal issues you know generally has anywhere between between two hundred two hundred and twenty five active files on any given month our crisis line we probably between three fifty four hundred calls a month and that sort of our transition health generally works at anywhere from it's generally anywhere from eighty five to ninety percent capacity in any given month women generally the general length of stay at the transition health is probably between eighteen and twenty days because the calls that we're receiving on the crisis line are calls from women who are actively seeking shelter in need and if we're not able to provide that shelter then are workers need to help them develop a short term safety plan and look at other resources that might be available to them and in the community or other communities well outside of minimal we have lots of calls from people who just need immediate support on the phone they may not be ready to to leave their situation or even want to leave their situation but they need ongoing support most people could call three or four times a week and tell the until they feel that they're able to better manage and we may not hear from them for a while and then hear from them again i don't know if i'm answering your question and i kind of feel like i'm are addresses this is done to get shoes that are associated with family violence and you know going in and working with that with that with the kids that are in the school in terms of helping them sort of identify you know what feels good what doesn't feel good how did they know that they're in danger you know is providing them with a safe environment so that they can come for really really sort of examine and speak to their needs you know and we need to provide on programming and support services for teens who are sort of entering you know sort of first venturing into that world of independence but who may have learned some behaviors that you know can get them into a lot of trouble further on down the road in terms of their relationships to chum so  d and soldiers in particular who have experienced that coming back and then continuing the violence towards an enemy towards women in their own homes and making that connection we've also obviously made the connection between a cycle of violence from men who have experienced violence themselves in their own homes and then continue it interestingly he experienced violence in his own home from his father towards his mother and himself and he has chosen something else he said that violence is a choice and he chooses instead to work against that and with men and women so he supports an organization in the u k called refuge which is like haven and some of haven services particularly the transmission house in that it's a refuge for women but he also is a patron of that works with men who are experiencing p t s d he makes it very clear though that that may be the reason for the violence but it's not an excuse for it and that there isn't ever an excuse for it and so i think you know one of the things that's appealing about him not only because of his stardom within the world of pop culture and and on the stage he crosses some generational boundaries from from star trek to the x men movies to you know the stage in theater in the u k and he's somebody who i think when he's speaking so personally really appeals to our partners in this fight which are in particularly other men and it really seems to me impossible to solve any of these problems without men coming aboard  he for she campaign maybe we'll talk about a little bit later certainly makes that section well let's put it to her local experience we do have a men's group here i believe that they were on their management issues  maybe fearful that time that may be a route that they're going to go down and they want to make changes now before before they start to engage in violent behavior or change their past behavior so it's a twenty week it's a sixteen to is the organization are looking at how we work with men its allies and so we're developing some protocols and we also recognize that we have males that come into the age of the as clients that you know in particular know i want to deal with the he two she project of the united nations because we sometimes get very tired of the united nations making studies and reports and nothing ever seems to come of it and governments make promises may have some comments on the project well over six million people watched the video of emma watson delivering her speech to the united nations about the heat as she campaigned and of course she is very elegant and graceful and ha lovely accent and a huge following within the harry potter world and beyond but she did speak very eloquently about why it had empassioned her and she talked about wanting to direct her own plays even a child in her home and her brothers were allowed to but she wasn't and so she was called bossy and it can be something as innocent as that right it starts out by wanting to quality assuming that equality and then getting talked out of it and i think feminism for me is about choices as making sure you always have more than one and when somebody asked me that i was working as a lifeguard trying to put myself through university and a fellow colleague of woman came up to me and she said you seem like a like a woman who's what's that word feminist you know do you really want to be called that and i yes i do i stand strongly behind it it's not about man hating it's not about wanting superiority it's about wanting what we're entitled and always happened in title to high which is choice and i think that seemed a little bit less abrasive to her than maybe some other kind of assumptions that she's made i think it's a word that we have to define for ourselves men and women and that it's something i feel has a very strong place in society today certainly and when i said you know if not me who if not now whe i think that's really the question we have to ask but many many issues in our culture and for me this is one of them that's close to my heart and something that i've been working with volunteer in the community for twenty years and i know there are women at haven and elsewhere who have devoted a lifetime to it which is incredibly admirable and selfless and necessary i live for a world in which it's not necessary  existed for a in because of their assumptions but once we have a conversation and they get to understand what feminism means for each one of us because it's very unique and they are more comfortable going come forward that we reckon recognize very clearly is that even we as individuals who work at this agency and do this work in this sector have varying degrees of feminism and we our definition of feminism or how we to feminism can be quite different from one person to the next and i think it's it's around respecting a person's choice and decision to be a certain way in the world and we and within that framework  into one of these discussions with anybody i try to go for the working poor financial and usually i stuck with saying what about it's not right that women are subordinate that you're here having with a woman i mean and i think it can be when we're talking with women have been at the transition home during a crisis when they come in through the door and so having a discussion about t for a certain period of time and i think then once they start to feel safe and all the things that i want and all the worry that they're bringing in through the door is still a somewhat then you can sometimes have that conversation because it's i think it's thr some of which are slightly cynical but what intrigued me as much as anything about apart from the slap that she spoke for herself and for other women apart from the fact that  yes what i thought was interesting were some of the comments because there were some flash comments that were truly women hasty in which they really tried to tear her down and i think it went beyond it went beyond just sort of normal attacks on celebrity it was an example of the men who have access to social media and who have access to performance actually choosing to try and destroy her reputation and i don't know if that's a twenty first century thing and i'm just too old to understand  women will put up with it well i think we have all have access to social media space if we choose to and how we perform there is up to our own standards of value and ethics and you know conscience and certainly we talk about it a lot in my media studies classes which more than half of those classes are women and they are active on social media and they're active maybe everybody needs to be reminded about our digital footprint and if you put that out there it's out there forever and you're accountable for it unless you're hiding behind he's their name and your perpetuating a conversation but are you adding to it are you contributing meaningful useful factual information or are you just using it as a soapbox to spew you know and i say unless you can put something on a billboard up by the side of the road and highway and stand in front of it with a megaphone don't put it online because you've got the same amount of visibility and accountability in my mind but there is a lot of it that's performance i think what we should be thinking about is where is that anger coming from what is the root of it did a really interesting article around the whole shebang ghomeshi scandal when he talked about narcissistic male rage and the number of men who are dealing with issues relate to their care by their mothers and or lack thereof or within the family unit not always their mother and then how that can manifest toward anger towards community response he said one was for my father become stressed group and one was from my mother the refuge group so the women in these classes are eighteen to twenty two so for example on december sixth when we remember the fourteen women who were killed at a coal polytechnique most of them if not all of them were not born and we do have mature students in the classroom as well who were alive at that time i was a student at that time and so we have to explain to them what that meant and then how we are still seeing vestiges of it today in all of these different arenas and we do often have very interesting conversations sometimes the men are defensive because they feel they're not exhibiting those tendencies and yet they're lumped in the same category as a function of their gender and then we talk about how lots of women get lumped in a category even though they don't share those ideas necessarily with other women where heterogeneous group are very diverse and so i think when we answer those questions what does feminist mean to you it has to be on that personal level that cindy and don were talking about and certainly it's the context in which they're working but the day to day may be much more practical and and as we've been focusing about safety which which everyone has a right  from other boys on the playground from videogames from commercials from music videos and you know how are they to make sense of it and i remember when we partnered with haven just over a year ago to bring jack some cats in and talk about in particular the no bystander program and working with boys in sports in parliament but also in other environments to help them dissect the ways in which these messages are getting through to them but need to be deconstructed and then reconstructed into something much healthier and he's had quite a bit of success as a man talking man oh man oh to them and i think that's all m your campus and community station based in downtown and imo but also heard at c h l y dot ca where we stream live and podcast and yes i do have a few events others may wish to add to this this thursday march fifth there will be a screening of die and my apologies for the pronunciation because i have no idea how to pronounce arabic but it's the first film to come out of saudi arabia and the first one written and directed by a woman it's showing at seven pm again thursday march fifth in building three fifty six room one o nine it's noon for international women's day their special guest is her military mark the associate deputy representative for children and youth i guess thing that spore the province of zero seven five four five two two six or seven five eight eight seven nine two on international women's day than and i'm a women's resource center will hold their annual potluck dinner with the home only event but all children or welcome him for more information on that you can phone two five zero seven five three zero six three three bring a potluck dish to feed four to six people on the phone number again two five zero seven five three zero six three three and the last thing that i wanted to mention and i we may need a bit of clarification on this hopefully joy can provide one day more nine five female international students will speak about the state of islam with respect to women's issues in their home countries of saudi arabia india and pakistan it's a free event and it's going to be in building three fifty five room two zero three with refreshments afterwards in room two eleven and they're going to address the cultural and political realities of living as muslim women in their or home countries as well as in canada and there'll be a short q and a after the panel know what i'm hoping joy can clarify because even on the web site it's a little confusing it looks like the panel starts at ten am and then the refreshments in room two eleven are from noon until one thirty is that correct but the whole event is three hours so it's ten to eleven thirty for the panel of five women they'll each speak for ten to twelve minutes and then not only best time for a moderated q and a afterwards and then we'll at eleven thirty go across the hall to two eleven and there are hot and cold appetizers coffee and tea and people can just smell about and not from thirty to one yeah ok so so there's been a little bit of encourage people to come for as much as they can they'll be a number of english as a second language class students there as well so it will be a united nations around perhaps and we will be hearing from these  women there's also a woman from egypt and they'll be most of them are in the m b a program and so they're talking about what it's like to be muslim in their home countries but also here in canada and maybe some assumptions about how feminist  muslim women might be issues around their dress their choice of activities their marriage arrangements their issues to do with what their own education and their access to it and so it'll be a bit of myth busting but also celebrating some of the strides and successes of those women but also how we might help both here and abroad in their countries to continue the struggle that they feel is necessary within the culture is because it crosses all social strata and we're all in there in a sense sisterhood with respect for each other supporting each other in front of it where we can and getting to know each other spawning one more night in the year but who knows what might come of it but it's almost my favorite to hear hello and some people feel that we should have international women's month and so in that spirit we're actually also partnering with haven at the end of the month on march twenty sixth at seven pm to do a play that bonnie caterson has written and it's co sponsored by both haven and kids about theater and it's called when i was stories of strength healing and hope and we had hoped to get it closer to the eighth date but didn't have access to the theater on campus so it will be a little bit later in the month but no less connected to these issues and we feel it's very important to continue to recognize this day not only because women's successes go often on recognize but because it gives us an opportunity to talk about these many other concerns and ways in which we can go forward and in particular i'm thinking about the murdered and missing aboriginal women in this country now a startling number and a particularly targeted group and a group that we try to work with in this community as well of course for their own leadership on this issue and i'm glad you brought that up because i was going to note that three quarters with who's flown and the two topics that i want to get to the issue of the and only two people are dead but acts of terrorism the connection of home to terrorist movements is very unexplained and we've talked about security happened by and understand the local cultural activities that are happening as well as some of the history that you know really close could we dismantle some of our stereotypes and i think that the key piece to working with the first nations community in and imo is to engage to have them move forward and and then what we can do personally is to understand the culture a bit more an dential school survivors under family members because it's something that can be generational of don't think there's any excuse or accident that harper in a conservative government that continues to slash women's programs and access to health and safety and education and the kind of work that haven does is the same government you know that has instituted at that time the residential school system and that was a time of domestic terrorism too in my mind so i certainly after what cindy and don have said with respect to the first nations women themselves speaking about what their experience is and what they need from us as partners in the sisters in spirit event that we had enough tobar and even in events like one billion rising and so on we have seen great leadership by first nations women in this community talking about their experiences and asking for change and their commitment to the idle no more movement and and all of us who stand behind them i think on this is essential in terms of turning back the tide i've visited communities along the highway of tears just does the obesity citizen not in any official capacity communities who pretty well built the idle no more movement women who have been removed from the public sphere by canadian government legislation over the decades the internet was no friend to women at any time and it still sits there so i think that's a piece of the problem i'd like to kind of finish up with a little bit of round things that we've noticed th not exclusive to arts and humanities so we're seeing more and more women attending university or other forms of sort of structured education and they're certainly exposed to some of these ideas and to conversations with each other about it there are some assumptions that we have reached equality and so we don't need to fight so hard anymore and i consider it my job to remind them of places where we can still apply a lot of pressure and be vigilant but also where we can celebrate the successes encouraged by the number of people who want to engage in conversation about this not only offline but online i think social media used properly can be a huge tool of resistance and huge microscope back to find glass to point at places where things are still so wrong and need to be righted and i want to encourage by that i think it's also a place where we need to be vigilant about violence and cyber bullying and other forms of violence towards women and men but i think that the partnership with men and instilling healthy attitudes in young recently was an article on the b b c website by a filmmaker a woman filmmaker who went to india actually spent two years making a film about what happened in the wake of that her reflect rape on the bus in delhi the victim of that was actually a medical student who had just passed her final exams i mean it was just everything about it was awful she interviewed i mean i'm going to the bad part first she interviewed at least one of the perpetrators who had no remorse at all even the defense lawyers thought that what the perpetrators did was just fine became actually overwhelmed by all of this and that one point just thought she was going to have to throw in the towel but her film incidentally is going to be shown on march eighth on the b b c and also on  india india by the way actually makes quite a big deal of international women's day and that's where she actually drew hope because of course that incident spawn the lot of protests and the protesters who are treated very badly by the police tear gas water cannons the whole thing but they persisted and many of those protesters were men so that's i think where she sees hope happening she almost thinks they only in india have people actually gone out into the streets men we went together to make this issue in the public kinds of conversations and make them available to the peer listening public until thank you and i appreciate the work that is happening is beyond you in the partnerships that we forged over the years with fear use well as communities and i think the way in which to do that is just for our head of women to have a strong voice and invite partnerships into that into that conversation and so i think that this is one we're doing  thank you very much for the opportunity to engage in this conversation thank you for participating there will be upon us look at the website joyce i agree that the conversation is essential and i think we also need to change the conversation on particular issues and the point that you made earlier with respect to feminism being wrongly equated with man hating that it's really about loving ourselves and not to want the same rights and protection and full empowered life that we want for men and we hope that we can be on the same side of the barricades pushing forward rather than being on opposite sides and i guess i would urge everybody listening and those who might be talking to others who've met the conversation to ask the question and not me too if not now when and i'd like to finish with one word that we have to look to to connect to the issue of violence and choices for violence and that will domination and had like all to be constantly vigilant for attempts to dominate  and joy google or from vi you that is our show check us out on facebook and i'm behalf of our production team thanks so much for joining us