Equity Matters

Dec 13

The Note-taker: Innovative assistive technology enables blind scholars to take notes

Michael J. Astrauskas, Arizona State University
Guest contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on diversity, creativity and innovation / diversité, innovation et créativité

To see a whiteboard at the front of the class, students with severe visual impairment typically use a monocular for far-sight viewing. This provides a greatly magnified but a very narrow field of view of the board. In addition to the monocular, they might need to use their glasses for note-taking (i.e. near-sight viewing). As these students take notes in class, they must repeatedly switch back and forth between the whiteboard and their notes,...

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Dec 8

Conversion Therapy Fantasies and Religious Opposition to LGBTQ-inclusive Education

Catherine Taylor, University of Winnipeg
Guest Contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirited) peoples.

As we look towards International Human Rights Day on 10 December, I share the frustration of many students, parents, and educators that as a nation we often stand timidly by while LGBTQ young people are being hurt in hostile school cultures, citing our reluctance to choose sides between religious rights to...

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Dec 6

Remembering December 6: Linking Structural and Interpersonal Violence in LGBTQ Lives

Janice Ristock, University of Manitoba
Guest Contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirited) peoples.

December 6th, today, marks the national day of remembrance and action on violence against women. It is the anniversary of the 1989 l’École Polytechnique de Montréal massacre where fourteen women were singled out and murdered by Marc Lepine, a man who blamed women and feminists for his...

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Dec 1

Trans Trouble: Structural and ‘Administrative En-gendering’ as the Academic-Corporate Complex

Bobby Noble, York University
Guest Contributor This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirit) peoples.

As I sit down to draft this blog entry, Dean Spade’s important book Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Practice and the Limits of Law literally lands at my door. I’ve been thinking for a while now about the relationship between what Spade calls administrative violence and structures of binary genders...

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Nov 30

LGBT Lessons (Not) learned: Dominant gender ideology as a basis for transphobic and homophobic violence

Gerald Walton, Lakehead University
Guest Contributors

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirited) peoples.

In September 2011, the Institute for Canadian Values ran an advertisement in the National Post asking that children not be “exposed” to discussions in school about LGBT issues. Children’s identities as boys and girls, the Institute reasoned, would be “corrupted.” The Institute...

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Nov 25

The L-Word: It’s Not Getting Better For Lonely Young Lesbians

Melissa Carroll, McMaster University
Guest Contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirit) peoples.

On Friday, October 4, 2010 the lifeless bodies of 21 year-old Jeanine Blanchette and her 17 year-old girlfriend Chantal Dube were found in a wooded area behind a social services building in Orangeville, Ontario. Immediately deemed a double-suicide by police, the lesbian couple’s disappearance and their eventual deaths drew little attention...

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Nov 22

Status of Women: Three reasons women aren’t in leadership positions

Curt Rice, University of Tromsø
Guest contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s Equity Issues Portfolio series on the Status of Women in the Disciplines and in the Academy.

It’s true in higher education, it’s true in law firms, it’s true in hospitals (it’s even true in monarchies!): women can get far, but they can’t get all the way to the top.

In Europe, fewer than 10 percent of universities are run by women. In Fortune 500 companies, about 17 percent of lawyers are women. Even in a relatively egalitarian country like...

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Nov 17

Asylum Rights and Seeking Refuge from homophobic and transphobic persecution

Sharalyn Jordan, Simon Fraser University and Christine Morrissey, Rainbow Refugee Committee
Guest Contributors

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirited) peoples.

Currently no less than 76 countries criminalize same-sex sexual acts or gender variability. Many of these statutes can be traced to colonial imposition, specifically, the British penal code section 377. Direct criminalization and morality laws create the means for abuse of power by police and others in authority. Surveillance and threat is dispersed...

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Nov 10

Articulate Silences, Racism and Settler Colonialism in LGBTQ Politics

Scott Lauria Morgensen, Queen’s University
Guest contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirited) peoples.

Perhaps you’ve heard the idea that experiencing oppression should sensitize one group not to oppress another. It is matched by evidence to the contrary, that some oppressed people invest in oppressing other oppressed people all the time. And so we find LGBTQ movements in Canada and the United States professing the inclusion of diversity as their hallmark and, paradoxically, pursuing their freedom...

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Nov 8

Status of Women: A Midcareer Feminist Reflection on the Humanities

Renata Kobetts Miller, City University of New York
Guest Contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s Equity Issues Portfolio series on the Status of Women in the Disciplines and in the Academy.

In an era of increasing contingency and devaluation of the humanities, we should take a moment to reconsider the meaning of activism.

It is time for midcareer feminists in the humanities to consider the legacy of their foremothers, as many of our mentors assume emerita status. Susan Gubar, one of the world’s most eminent feminist academics,...

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