Equity Matters

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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Nov 3

Post-Secondary Education and Queer Student Engagement in Canada

Rachael Sullivan, University of British Columbia
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.

At the recent ‘We Demand: History/Sex/Activism in Canada’ conference, I was struck by the centrality of post-secondary education, and specifically university and college campuses, in the recollections of prominent queer activists. The contributors to the conference’s opening plenary included Ron Dutton of BC Gay and...

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Nov 1

Status of Women: Gender and the Ivory Ceiling of Service Work in the Academy

Joy Misra, Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, Elissa Holmes, Stephanie Agiomavritis, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Guest Contributors

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

Service work continues to pull women associate professors away from research. What can be done?

How does a successful associate professor with a distinguished publication record, a visible leadership role among women scientists on campus, and prestigious grant funding for interdisciplinary initiatives in graduate and undergraduate training as well as research feel about...

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Oct 27

Black queer and Black Trans – Imagine Imagination Imaginary Futures

Rinaldo Walcott, University of Toronto
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.

Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to teach, to learn from and to learn with an incredible and impressive group of Black queer and Black Trans students. These students live and work at the interstices of communities, studies and politics and in each case they are often not imagined as belonging. In most...

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Oct 25

Anti-homophobia education beyond bullying

Hélène Frohard-Dourlent, University of British Columbia
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.

If there was any doubt that getting through high school is still difficult for queer and trans youth in Canada, Jamie Hubley’s decision to end his life last week in Ottawa is a painful reminder of that fact. Hubley’s suicide prompts us to reflect on the work that still needs to be done to make Canadian...

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Oct 20

Twenty Years Later for GLBTQ Youth: How Far Have We Come?

Gloria Filax, Athabasca 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.

My doctoral work focused on GLBTQ youth during the 1990s in Alberta, which was unique in Canada for the state-sanctioned resistance to protect the basic rights of citizens who were GLBTQ.  Even while the source and particulars of oppression in Alberta were unique, the effects on GLBTQ youth and...

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Oct 18

Developing Intersectional Solidarities: A Plea for Queer Intersectionality

Sirma Bilge, Université de Montréal
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.

Contemporary progressive politics of protest frequently face a problem of legitimacy, authority and representation. Since at least the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, anti-racist, anti-colonial feminists and queer activists have taken issue with the politics of representation and the problem of speaking for/about others. Scholars like...

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Oct 14

Homophobia and beyond: Closets, cloisters and other corrective measures

Richard Sullivan, University of British Columbia
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.

The recent publicity about bullying to the point where young people were driven to their deaths got me thinking about how “anxious” the perpetrators were. A phobia is an anxiety disorder and the term homophobia has now been bandied about for at least three decades, curiously without psychiatric validation as a...

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