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VMS/DC 2llnlike the situation in some countries, the work of mothers is highly valued by Nicaraguan society, according to Heather Conn 7 How rigid is the link between monkeys and humans? Jan DeGrass reviews the work of Sarah Hrdy, a sociobiologist who is also a feminist Qjust what constitutes adequate protection for battered women? A recent study by the Women's Research Centre examines the system facing battered women and proposes more workable alternatives 1 0 While we in Canada prepare for nuclear holocaust, elsewhere in the world people have already died as a result of nuclear testing 1 2 Women are journeying out of the patriarchy to create a freer context j for our lives. Michele Wollstonecroft describes ja recent video installation ;.| by three B.C. artists which explores this theme 1 3 The producers of the film P4W weren't expecting a box-office hit, but that's, what they got. Pat Feindel! interviews Janis Cole and j Holly Dale about the making of their film 1 5 A Time to Rise is a film which documents the* struggle of B.C. farmworkers to unionize in the'] face of incredible odd$ t ' i! 1 6 Helen Potrebenk-o has!; some theories of her;own jj about stress. If you've justj; had a bad day, read this. ' It'll help. Really. . . Elsa Smith was one of over 30,000 participants in Vancouver's April 24 anti-nuclear protest. Photo by Lyla Smith. SUBSCRIBE TO KIMES/J Published 10 times a year by Vancouver Status of Women 400A West 5th Ave., Vancouver, B.C. V5Y 1J8 □ VSW membership - includes Kinesis subscription $20 (or what you can afford) □ Kinesis subscription only - $13 □ Institutions - $40 □ Sustainers - $75 Name _ Amount Enclosed_ Please remember that VSW operates on inadequate funding — we need member support! Kinesis May 1982 INTERNATIONAL Mothers an active, respected force in Nicaraguan society by Heather Conn A statue stands near the main square of a small southern Nicaraguan town. It is of a young woman who sits with head bent and legs outstretched, her face closed in a smile. The plaque beneath it reads: "In love of the Nicaraguan mother". In this Central American country, motherhood is a sacred institution. Like the framed pictures of Christ and war martyrs found in every home, a mother is the subject of respect and admiration. She provides comfort and support for her children. She is a strong, focal family member who heads 60 per cent of the nation's households. As hosts, Nicaraguan mothers are warm, generous and hospitable. Whether in the comfortable home of a city doctor or an isolated peasant hut, they never, hesitate to offer visitors a meal, sew a stranger's torn jeans or invite you to stay the night. Their welcoming "Esta su casa" (This is your house) is meant in all sincerity'— what is theirs is yours. Women fettered by 'duty' to family Yet despite the graciousness of their role, s these women face many real obstacles that >, prevent their emancipation from mother- g hood. I KINESIS -KINESIS is published ten times a year by Vancouver Status of Women. Its objectives are to enhance understanding about the changing position of women in society and work actively towards achieving social change. VIEWS EXPRESSED IN KINESIS are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect VSW policy. All unsigned material is the responsibility of the Kinesis editorial group. CORRESPONDENCE: Kinesis, Vancouver Status of Women, 400A West 5th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V5Y 1J8. MEMBERSHIP in Vancouver Status of Women is $20/year (or what you can afford). This includes a subscription to Kinesis. Individual subscriptions to Kinesis are $13/year. SUBMISSIONS are welcome. We reserve the right to edit, and submission does not guarantee publication. Include a SASE if you want your work returned. WORKERS ON THIS ISSUE: Janet Beebe, Janet Berry, Jan DeGrass, Dorothy Elias, Pat Feindel, Jena Hamilton, Nicky Hood, Naomi Mitchell, Marion Smith, Jeanne Taylor, Michele Wollstonecroft. DEADLINE FOR NEXT ISSUE: May 15 for May 31 publication. Late copy printed as space permits. Vancouver Status of Women offices are located at 400A W. 5th Avenue, Vancouver, V5Y 1J8. Office hours are Monday to Thursday, 9:00 to 5:00 p.m. (some evenings by appointment). Our phone number is 873-1427. Religion and its strong moral code provide rigid rules for acceptable behaviour; while men are free to flirt and carouse, obedience and fidelity to a husband are unwritten laws. As one poster reads: "A woman who neglects her children for a lover does not deserve the name of mother." In most cases, fathers are the dominant authority figures of the family. In one small town, a public notice about changes Amidst a strong family atmosphere, mothers emerge as efficient, hard-working, ** aggressive people in school hours is addressed only to "the father of the family". A mother's control of her children is not officially recognized. And despite a mother's role as primary 'nurturer, she receives little help from men in domestic duties. Few fathers are found in the kitchen helping with the preparation and serving of meals. Instead, they are seen taking children for walks, horseback rides or cradling them to sleep. One public administrator in Managua estimates that only about five per cent of households have shared domestic duties within the home. Laws support women and families The evening newspaper in Nicaragua features a daily cartoon of a mother and her child. It explains the correct duties of each parent according to their sex role: a man is to protect his wife, while a woman should pour her love into her children. Both are seen as active participants in rearing their family, but each one's function is separate and sex-defined. Hence, what is written in the Statute on the Rights of Nicaraguans is false: "In family relations there exists absolute equality of rights and responsibilities between man and woman." However, there is one written law that does hold weight and assures that mothers are not left to support their children alone. This is the new family law, guaranteeing a father's financial support of children up to the age of seven. When the child reaches seven, the family can collectively visit a lawyer and, with the child's consent, seek adoption or choose one parent as sole supporter. Whatever is decided, the child has equal say on choosing his or her future. As one Managuan woman declared, "I think in a Latin American country such as Nicaragua is, this is an historical advantage." The general welfare of the family is always a concern in Nicaragua. If a man or woman is sent to jail, the pay that either one receives for prison work is sent back to the family. This ensures that children still receive financial support, despite the temporary loss of a parent. Responsibility for children shared Throughout the country, microcosms of the family are found, particularly on transportation vehicles. On a bus, a person sitting next to a mother holds her child for her. On a boat, a visitor offers "food to children lying next to her. People share collectively in the care of children — a stranger often comforts a baby while a mother changes diapers. People lend parents blankets or a shoulder to lean on if a trip is long or uncomfortable. In "barrios" or district neighbourhoods, many people in their twenties still live happily at home. Children of many different families walk freely among each other's' homes, treated like kin by adults. There is nonsense of exclusivity or ..private sanctity of the family; homes are open to all. Amidst this strong family atmosphere, mothers emerge as efficient, hard-working, aggressive people. They are an active force in Nicaragua — a national committee of mothers of war heroes and martyrs exists to do internal solidarity work. These women hold protests and functions to commemorate the war victory and to promote », revolutionary spirit. % It is no surprise that every May 30 in Nicaragua, parties are held to celebrate Mother's Day. The Nicaraguan mother deserves to be honoured — hers is a 24- hour occupation. radical reviewer Canada's only radical/feminist book review and literary tabloid. Reviews Fiction Poetry Criticism Interviews and more... Published three times per year Subscribe P.O. Box 24953 Station C Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5T 4G3 Individual $5.00/year Institution M0.00/year Sustainer $50.00/year ADDRESS _ CITY_ _ POSTAL CODE_ May 1982 Kinesis ACROSS B.C. Hospital scoreboard — an abortion update by Melinda Suto and Marva Blackmore The following article is reprinted from the April 1982 newsletter of the Concerned Citizens for Choice on Abortion. CCCA may be contacted by writing P.O. Box 24617, Station C, Vancouver, B.C. V5T 4E1 or by phoning 876-9920. CCCA newsletter subscriptions are $S/year. Anti-abortionists have frequently chosen hospital board elections as their battleground to deny women choice on abortion. Each board may decide to appoint a Therapeutic Abortion Committee (TAC), which has the power to decide whether a woman can have an abortion. If a particular hospital board decides not to appoint a TAC, the consequences for women in that area are serious, especially if she is many miles from the closest hospital with a TAC, a situation not uncommon in B.C. The accompanying update on the "Hospital Scoreboard (oringially published in December 1981 CCCA Newsletter), was done to provide women with accurate information regarding the availability of abortion in B.C. hospitals. Eighty-seven questionnaires were sent to hospitals that were likely to have medical-surgical facilities, and thirty-six replies were received. What is happening on the B.C. hospital scene? SURREY At Surrey Memorial Hospital in June of 1981, the Therapeutic Abortion Committee was disbanded by its anti-abortion dominated hospital board. This meant that no therapeutic abortions could be performed at that hospital for any reason. As a result, physicians refused to participate on the other administrative committees of the hospital, stating that their ability to provide medical service and to exercise sound medical judgement was being seriously curtailed. B.C.'s Minister of Health, Jim Neilsen, appointed an administrator to mediate between the hospital board and the doctors. The hospital board election was cancelled and the TAC would not be reinstated until a compromise had been reached. On February 5, 1982, a compromise was reached and the TAC was reinstated. However, restrictive guidelines have been placed on when and for what reasons abortions may be performed. CCCA obtained this information from a doctor on staff at Surrey Memorial: * No abortions will be performed after 20 weeks gestation. * Abortions can be performed if the mental or physical health of the woman is endangered. The doctor must provide documentation regarding signs and symptoms of health risks. The TAC is instructed to interpret Section 251 of the Criminal Code - especially the definition of health - in a conservative manner. * Abortions will be performed in the case of rape or incest. * Women seeking repeat abortions must be seen by a minister, chaplain or social worker. * Abortion alternative counselling is compulsory and may be done by the woman's physician. LOCATION HOSPITAL TAC # of APPL. ABORTIONS Ashcroft Ashcroft & Dist. General no 0 Bella Coola Bella Coola General no 0 Burnaby Burnaby General yes 419 394 Burns Lake Burns Lake & Dist. no Campbell Rr. Campbell River & Dist. yes 139 128 Chemainus Chemainus General no Ganges Gold River Lady Minto Gulf Islands yes 19 19 Gold River Health Clinic no Hazelton Wrinch Memorial yes 1 0 Kelowna Kelowna General yes 218 199 Kitimat Kitimat General yes unknown 28 Langley Langley Memorial yes unknown unknown Mackenzie Mackenzie & Dist. no 100 Mile House 100 Mile Dist. yes 1 0 Nelson Kootenay Lake Dist. yes 99 91 New Westminster Royal Columbian yes unknown unknown North Van. Lions Gate yes* 750 750 Oliver South Okanagan General Penticton Regional yes 0 0 Penticton yesz 167 154 Port Alberni West Coast General yes 53 38 Port Hardy Port Hardy no^ Powell River Powell River General yes 35 30 Queen Charl. Queen Charl. Islands Gen. G.R. Baker Memorial yes unknown unknown Quesnel yes 108 101 Richmond Richmond General yes* 414 395 Surrey Surrey Memorial yes3 unknown unknown - Tahsis Tahsis no. Tofino Tofino General nob Vancouver Children's no Vancouver Grace no Vancouver Shaughnessy Vancouver General yes 796 796 Vancouver yes unknown unknown Vanderhoof St. Vincent's no Victoria Victoria General no' 132 121 Victoria Royal Jubilee yes 920 823 Williams Lake Cariboo Memorial yes unknown 89 Ifor fiscal year ^thirteen applic ?no surgury done ending March 31, 1981 ations cancelled at this hospital 7more restrictive guidelines commenced March 5, 1982 ?TAC re-instated Feb. 5. 1982 with more restrictive guidelines lents refer °does not qualify under Criminal Code of Canada: pat red to ,West Coast General or Nainaimo Regional 7TAC disbanded in March 1982* VICTORIA Victoria General Hospital's TAC was disbanded for the month of March, 1982 by the anti-abortion dominated board. The events leading up to this action were related to CCCA by a member of CARAL (Canadian Abortion Rights Action League) in Victoria. The three-member medical executive committee proposed a set of guidelines to be followed by the TAC when approving abortion requests. These guidelines were then taken to three medical staff meetings for approval. The guidelines were rejected at the Family Physicians staff meeting, at the meeting of the Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as well as at a General Staff meeting. At the February meeting of the hospital board it was decided that because 100% of the doctors had not been present at these staff meetings a mail-out referendum would be conducted in March. Until the vote was completed, though, the TAC would be disbanded. Some of the proposed guidelines are: #Women seeking first trimester abortions can be no more than 11 weeks pregnant at the time of application. * Women seeking second trimester abortions can be no more than 18 weeks pregnant at the time of application. * Women seeking abortions must be seen by two doctors and both opinions must be submitted to the TAC. The second opinion must be a lengthy, narrative style justification of the need for the abortion. * No woman may obtain an abortion for what the board deems to be minor reasons, such as emotional or financial distress. * The woman must be informed as to the "long-term physical and emotional effects" of having an abortion. (No mention is made of informing her that carrying a pregnancy to term is 10 times more dangerous than having a first trimester abortion. Nor has any reference been made to recent studies done in Vancouver that for many women the effects of a first trimester abortion are far less devastating than having an unwanted pregnancy or surrendering a child at birth for adoption - an option most married couples would not even consider.) A late note: Doctors at Victoria General turned down the guidelines proposed in the mailout referendum. As a result, the Therapeutic Abortion Committee has been terminated by the hospital board. No more abortions may be performed. RICHMOND After a series of secret meetings at Richmond General Hospital between the anti- abortion dominated board and members of the medical staff of RGH, an 8-point set of guidelines for the TAC was presented on March 5, 1982. According to a report in the Richmond Review, under the terms of the new guidelines, abortions will only be performed under the following conditions: continued on page 6 4 Kinesis May 1982 ACROSS CANADA Four-woman team to scale Alaska's Mt. McKinley Four experienced women mountaineers are planning to climb 20,300' Mt. McKinley in Alaska this May. The highest peak in North America, Mt. McKinley has been called "the coldest mountain on earth", with temperatures far below zero and frequent winds to 100 mph. The climbers will start their ski-in to the mountain from Kahiltna Glacier in Mt. McKinley Park, Alaska. They are allowing one month for the climb. The climbing team will consist of: leader Jan St. Amand, a first aid attendant and kinesiology student at Simon Fraser University; Elaine Kennedy, M.D., who has high altitude experience climbing in South America; Jane Weller, a worker at Mountain Equipment Co-op who has climbed Mt. Logan and several Yukon peaks; and Barb Clemis, an Outward Bound instructor and physiotherapist . The women are selling expedition t-shirts which read "Women on Denali" "Mt. McKinley". If you want information about the climb, or would like to support the climb by buying a t-shirt, call Jan St. Amand at 873- 9409. Indian woman faces deportation, social rejection Amarjit Kaur Sandhu, a woman whose husband left her in India, then refused to sponsor her as an immigrant to Canada when she came looking for him is facing deportation this month. In the face of rejection by her husband after she arrived in Canada on a temporary visitor's permit, Amarjit initiated maintenance, then divorce proceedings in family court. Immigration authorities extended her visitor's permit to May 28 to allow her case to go to court, but now they say she must go back to India. It is crucial that Amarjit be granted permanent status and the opportunity to make a new life for herself in Canada, for if she is forced to return to India deserted and alone, she will be a social outcast. Suicide or a life of prostitution may be the only alternatives for her. In the little time left, all concerned individuals and organizations are requested to write letters supporting permanent status for Amarjit to: The Minister of Immigration, Lloyd Axworthy (c/o Parliament Buildings, Ottawa). Copies of letters should be sent to Amarjit's lawyer Calvin Sandborn at Matsqui/Abbotsford Community Legal Services, 2406 Montrose St., Abbots- ford, B.C. Women counted in the legislature Here are the latest figures on women in provincial government: The Northwest Territories has the largest percentage of elected women, with 20% of the seats held by women. The November election in Manitoba brought 7 women to the legislature for a total of 12.3% of the seats. In Alberta, six seats are held by women. Quebec women hold seven of 122 seats. In B.C. 6 of 57 seats are held by women; in Ontario, 6 of 125; in New Brunswick, 4 of 58; in P.E.I., 2 of 32;-and in Newfoundland, 2 of 52 seats. Both Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia have one woman sitting in the legislature. Nova Scotia's Alexa McDonough is also the only woman party leader (NDP). (Status of Women News) Nearly half of female-headed families are poor The National Council of Welfare recently published a report based on the preliminary findings of the 1980 federal survey on income distribution in Canada. The figures would be startling were they not a repeat of the same old story. According to the report, in 1980 10.4% of Canadian families lived in poverty. For single people, the risk of poverty was three times as great - 31.4% of all single Canadians were poor in 1980. Female-headed families remain highly vulnerable to poverty - 41.5% of these families live below the poverty line, the risk of poverty being six times greater for women than for men. For single women, the degree of poverty compared to men was not so great, but the difference is still a telling one. 38.1% of single women were poor in 1980, compared to 22.9% of men. Women make up 67.8% of all single people in Canada. The average income of single men in 1980 was $16,659 compared to single women's average income of $8,101. Households headed by men had an average income of $25,464 than double the $10,860 of female-headed family From these figures, it is not surprising that income distribution overall remains a highly unequal proposition. In 1980, the poorest 20% of Canadian families had only 5.9% of all family income. Among single people, the top fifth claimed 45.5% of total income - eleven times the poorest group's share. Battered women face court order delays A recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada may force battered women to wait eight to ten weeks to obtain legal protection from men who have assaulted them in the home. The decision means that provincial family judges can no longer enforce restraining orders on men who have assaulted women in the home. Restraining orders, which bar a man from the family home, could formerly be obtained within five days with the help of a community worker, but now they must be obtained through county or supreme court. Due to heavy case back-log, a woman can be left waiting up to eight weeks, forcing her to flee the home indefinitely while the man remains. The greater complexity of these courts also necessitates the advice of a lawyer. Moderate income women will be the most affected financially, since they don't qualify for legal aid and may not have access to money controlled by their husbands . A petition presented by the Committee for Justice for Assaulted Women at International Women's Day this year outlines the following proposals: - that courts be encouraged to have dually- appointed judges (who maintain both federal and provincial jurisdictions) to alleviate the current back-log of cases; - that unified courts exist province-wide, meaning that federal and provincial courts should merge when dealing with family issues; - that legislation be passed to make restraining orders "effectively enforceable" . For further information on this issue, write to: The Committee for Justice for Assaulted Women, c/o Scarborough Community Legal Services, 695 Markham Road, Suite 9, Scarborough, Ontario. (Toronto Clarion) Librarians lose back pay on technicality The union which" won in collective bargaining salary increases giving 52 female National Research Council librarians parity with male federal historical researchers has lost out in a recent try to win back pay for the 52. The Canadian Human Rights Comission ruled it could not grant the back pay request as it had earlier in a similar ruling affecting Treasury Board researchers, because the two groups work for different employers. The union, the Professional Institute of the Public Service, had contended that the Treasury Board and the Research Council are separate government employers in name only, and that the same discrimination found in one case applied to the other. The union said the ruling was unfair because it was based on a technicality. (SWAG News, Victoria) May 1982 Kinesis INTERNATIONAL Chinese feminists jailed for " sedition'' In Taiwan the struggle for. human rights is fraught with bitter irony. Although Dec. 10 is Human Rights Day internationally, it was during a supportive rally in Kaohsiung, Taiwan that violence erupted and more than 200 people were arrested. Eight of them, including two noted feminist leaders, were tried for "sedition" by a military tribunal, convicted and sentenced to from 12 years to life in prison. All eight were associated with the anti military/government magazine Formosa which had sponsored the demonstration. The feminists are Lu Hsiu-lien, 37, an editor of Formosa and an activist in women 's rights for over a decade, and Chen Chu, 31, deputy director of the magazine's Kaohsiung office. All trial defendants claimed 'confessions' had been illegally extracted from them during a two-month intensive interrogation. They were beaten, denied sleep, psychologically pressured and Lu was threatened with execution and family members' arrests. Following Lu's arrest Yeh Tao-lei, a sociologist, attempted to continue her organizing. She founded a lifeline crisis clinic and a women's aid centre in Kaohsiung. She was arrested, also charged with 'sedition', and sentenced to 14 years. Amnesty International has adopted the cases of Lu and Chen, and is considering that of Yeh. To protest these arrests, write President Chiang Ching-Kuo, Chieh Shou Hall, Chungking S. Rd, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China. (Broadsheet) Nestle boycott continues despite proposed marketing reforms According to the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT Canada) the international boycott of Nestle corporation continues despite the firm's March 16 compliance with the World Health Organization's restrictions for third world marketing of infant formulas. The capitulation came only days after Nestle suffered serious public relation defeats. A Nestle poll in Toronto indicated growing issue awareness and boycott support with 10% of the populace, some 250,000 people, actively abiding by it. Nestle was also unable to defeat a student boycott referendum at Notre Dame School. The American Public Health Association then voted unanimously to join the International Nestle Boycott Committee and its negotiation team. The boycott, in effect five years, has attempted to pressure Nestle (controllers of one third of the worldwide infant formula market) to change their agressive marketing practices. Health officials believe such tactics have contributed to the malnutrition, disease and death of millions of infants. Although infant formula is potentially life sustaining, the contamination of water, poverty and illiteracy prevalent in third world nations combines lethally with advertising which discourages breast feeding in favour of breast milk substitutes. Rafael Pagan, president of the Nestle Coordination Centre for Nutrition, maintains that Nestle will implement the WHO code "on its own initiative where no measures have been taken to apply (it)." It will switch to non-promotional labelling and will ban gift packages containing formula, bottles or other baby accessories. Health workers will receive supplies of formula only upon request. Spokespeople for the boycott express guarded optimism. David Hallman of INFACT notes discrepancies between the WHO code and Nestle's apparent interpretation of it. Douglas Johnson, national chairperson of INFACT, cautions that the announcement is not to be regarded as a settlement but as "the basis for a settlement." He recognizes a need to establish negotiations with Nestle to agree upon procedures of code implementation and continuing monitoring of Nestle compliance. Although an invitation to begin talks has been extended to the firm, Johnson stresses that the boycott will not be lifted until Nestle's commitment is confirmed with action. Sri Lanka women protest physical violence Women in Sri Lanka have had official equality and free education for more than 50 years, but working women have found that participation in new fields of work has subjected them to physical violence when they engage in workplace struggles. An article from Voice of Women (a Sri Lankan feminist journal) gives examples of women's participation in every progressive struggle for trade union and political rights since the beginning of the labour movement in the 1920s. Recently teachers and nurses, in separate demonstrations over the rising cost of living and for trade union rights, were beaten, stoned, run over, covered with oil, as well as verbally abused. The nurses went on strike again to protest about those attacks and Voice of Women has written to the President and to the newspapers to express their anger. (Outwrite) (Voice of Women is available from 529 Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo-8 Sri Lanka.) New York implements state- wide on-site daycare Those concerned with the stress caused to women by dual roles as workers and mothers are watching with great interest a new venture in daycare by New York State and public service unions. In the first statewide set-up in the country, the State of New York, acting as employer, has agreed to co-operate with employee unions in setting up 23 onsite daycare centres in places such as hospitals, psychiatric centres, and offices. The centres will care for children of state employees while their parents are at work. Employee unions and the state will jointly supply the funds, with the state providing the space. Planning and administration will be carried out by representatives of the state, unions, daycare specialists and parents. The concept for these centres was written into the Civil Services Employees Association 1972 union contract, but it did not become effective until 1979 when funding was released and a demonstration daycare was set up in Albany. Since then, 11 more centres have been planned and are awaiting final state approval and funding. Each centre will accommodate about 40 children. To receive funding, organizing committees must consist of representatives from management, labour and community organizations. They must also complete a needs survey. Fees at the model centre in Albany are on a sliding scale according to income and range from $42 to $58 per week per child, which is lower than the average for existing facilities. The Empire State Day Care Services Corporation, as the Albany centre is known, sets fees and budget through its Parents Advisory Committee. The greatest demand at this centre appears to be for infant care. There are currently 18 infants at the centre, with a waiting list of 200 more. The centre has a breastfeeding program enabling mothers to come in during the working day to feed their infants. (W0HCR News) ILO issues alert on carbonless copy paper The International Labor Organization has issued a health hazard alert requesting information about the effects of carbonless copy paper on eyes, mucous membranes and skin. The ILO reports that in Sweden office workers handling the paper have reported irritations of these parts of the body, although patch tests with the paper and the chemicals used in it have not shown allergic reactions. One trade union with 120,000 members received more than 1700 complaints in response to an inquiry to its members about the paper. Last June, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported a case of allergic contact dermatitis in a clerk in a college registrar's office who used carbonless copy forms. She developed the allergic reaction only at the times of year when large amounts of the paper were used for student registration. Earlier, University of Washington researchers had found that the paper can give off enough formaldehyde fumes to seriously irritate office workers' skin, eyes, noses and throats. The ILO alert asks for further information which can be passed on to the Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health. (W0HCR News) Kinesis May 1982 CONFERENCES Single mothers affirm common cause and support by Ellie Burton "Like the women's movement of the 70's where women recognized a common cause and found support in their newly discovered solidarity—so single parents all over British Columbia are bonding together." These were Rosemary Brown's opening remarks at a Single Mothers' Conference held recently in Surrey, and they reflect what happened for many women at the conference. Held on March 27, the conference brought together 150' women, many of whom had never been to a women's conference or a women's group before. The day began quietly as Rosemary Brown outlined just how bad the situation for B.C. women is. Rosemary Brown addressing conference Among other things, she commented that: women raising children on their own are six times more likely to live in poverty than men in the same situation; 63% of all poor people in B.C. are women; and, despite the fact that women make up 42% of the province's labour force, they remain largely poor due to the continued exploitation of their labour. HOSPITAL SCOREBOARD continued from page 3 * Approval cannot be granted solely at the request of the patient - in accordance with the law. * Women must be no more than 12 weeks pregnant at the date of application. The abortion may not take place after 16 weeks gestation. * Applications may be approved when any factor is present which endangers the life, physical health or mental health of the patient. A physician's personal letter must accompany the application explaining why the pregnancy should be terminated. * Patients under 16 must obtain parental consent. * Thorough counselling regarding alternatives to abortion is required. Contraceptive counselling is mandatory. * Patients seeking a repeat abortion must obtain a second written medical opinion. * The TAC has the authority to request additional information or the supporting documentation they consider necessary. * The TAC will be appointed by the hospital board from a list of seven names submitted by the chief of staff. Brown explained that single mothers often lose money when they go out to work. This is because income assistance is pegged to how many children one has, while the minimum wage is a flat rate. She disagrees with those who think the way out of this problem is for women to work in non-traditional fields. While she encourages women to do this kind of work if it's their choice, she says it's time the true skill and worth of service and clerical work was recognized, with wages reflecting this value. Equal pay, she insists, is the route out of the poverty cycle for women. Brown said that of 760,000 children under the age of six whose mothers are in the labour force, only 12.6% are in approved daycare. She ascribed this horrendous lack of daycare to the "schizophrenic approach" of the Socreds, which is: If women are married, they should stay home and take care of their kids. Once they're single parents, however, they should go out to work (and leave their kids anywhere they can!). Brown concluded by urging women to become a part of the political process in order to see changes made. After her speech, we split up for a variety of workshops. In the groups, we shared our stories, tightening in sadness and anger as we recognized ourselves in each other. We felt relief, too, that we weren't alone. Poverty creates desperate cycle I spoke with women individually about their 2 financial situations. They described the « desperate cycles they were caught in. S One woman said, "Welfare gives me $700 per month for me and my two kids. I can't make ends meet. I can't live on it. I get tired of them telling me I should be on a budget. Another woman said welfare gives her $800 for herself and her three children. She pays $500 rent (can't find anything cheaper), $55 hydro, the phone and other bills, and that leaves her $150 for all other expenses including food. "As far as I'm concerned," she said, "if you can't eat it, you don't buy it!" Although she was doing well in a college program in Alberta, she was forced to drop out when her childcare subsidy ended. She came to B.C. only to find there are no subsidies for school programs longer than one year, and that the waiting list for one year programs is 2 to 3 years long. Meanwhile, the only jobs she is able to get are jobs she literally can't afford to take. With a job paying $1000 she would lose her daycare subsidy, have the additional expenses of transportation and clothing needed for work and thus be worse off financially than if she didn't work. Also, if she went out to work, she would have to put her children in an unlicensed daycare or a family situation - both of which are serious gambles to take in the life of a child. Regional support groups formed "I'm trying to get off welfare. I've been in an upgrading program for two years. Now they tell me it may be cut out because of educational cutbacks. So what do I do? Either I give up entirely, or I have to start from 'A' again, and I won't. I'll fight. Nobody's going to stop me after I've gone this far!" Commenting on Rosemary Brown's statement that single mothers should get politically organized, this woman said, "It's all well and good for her to tell us that, but I don't have the time, I don't have the resources—I don't have the busfare!" This last comment was fairly indicative of where many women at this conference found themselves. At the final plenary session, the possibility of political organizing was mentioned. While it was thoughtto be a good thing, it seems many women are just not at that point yet. Women did respond strongly to the idea of regional support groups. A number of such groups were formed at the conference and women eagerly signed up for them. The conference overall was a success. It helped break down the isolation single mothers expereience and acted as a good starting point for further involvement and participation. What does this all mean? access and availability to abortion facilities steadily eroded. We can take heart in the fact that although these hospital boards are dominated by anti-abortionists who want abortions ended totally, they have not been able to achieve that goal. We owe a great deal of thanks to the doctors at these hospitals who have carried on the struggle within their own hospitals. These battles are serving notice to anti- abortionists that they cannot, with their single-minded election campaigns, take over hospital boards and force their minority will on all of us. However, the limited right to choose that presently exists is becoming more limited every day. The current law allows each individual hospital (even those funded by our tax dollars) to determine whether it will provide abortion services for the women in their area. The consequences of these cutbacks are devastating for many women. In Surrey, most women are being referred to Vancouver General Hospital where a liberal definition bf health is used. Those who can afford it are going to the United States to obtain abortions. During the past year in B.C. we have seen According to one doctor in Victoria, there has been an increase in women using noxious substances and dangerous methods to bring about their own abortions. The number of women there needing treatment for the effects of illegal backstreet abortions is also increasing. If abortions are not available, women will seek whatever means necessary to obtain the service. The question is not whether abortions exist but rather whether there will be safe, legal abortions or dangerous abortions. The current laws leave hospital boards and women vulnerable to attacks by a small minority who seek to impose their moral code on all people. We must continue to demand that the government take a strong stand and repeal all anti-abortion laws. Once we have achieved this goal, we will no longer be hampered when demanding that provincial governments allocate funding for all reproductive rights needs. We do not only need access to safe, legal abortions but also to contraceptive counselling, sex education, and unbiased counselling when pregnancy occurs. As long as the current law exists, attacks will continue, and we may see access to abortion services curtailed even further. May 1982 Kinesis SOCIOBIOLOGY Social equality not just a matter of natural selection by Jan DeGrass The trouble with Sarah Hrdy's arguments is that they seem to cut both ways. She's a scientist, and scientific data has a way of turning up jokers just when it seems like biology is on our side. But she's also a feminist and her conclusions are hopeful, powerful and optimistic for feminists. Hrdy is a Harvard graduate, a primatologist and sociobiologist. Her work has taken her from the slopes of Mount Abu in western India, where she studied the behaviour of Hanuman langur monkeys, to the jungles of Madagascar, where she listened to the howl of the pro-simian Indri. Specifically, she studies the behaviour of female monkeys. An account of her findings is contained in her recent book The Woman That Never Evolved (Harvard University Press, 1981). Theories subject to different interpretations Early March found her in Vancouver's Robson Square, lecturing to a somewhat somnolent lunch-hour crowd of homo sapiens. And although her lecture ranged widely, her comments clearly appealed to two opposing segments of the audience—those people who choose to view human behaviour as descending directly from our hairy ancestors, and those who seek a way out of a potential biological prison by believing that humans are reasoning, evolved beings capable of creating change. One of those present at the Robson Square lecture was Birute Galdikas, a visiting professor at Simon Fraser University whose studies take her regularly to Borneo to observe the solitary orangutan in its natural state. There are not too many people who can claim to have had a baby orangutan in a Seattle zoo named after them, but Birute is one of them. Sarah Hrdy and Birute Galdikas share similar views. There is no doubt in their minds that humans can change the human condition without benefit of evolution. The fact that they are called upon to discuss this issue is a tribute to the dramatic impact of sociobiology on our thinking. Biological determinism affirms male myths A primatologist is one who studies primates—an order comprised of several hundred simian creatures including lemurs, baboons, chimps, gorillas and humans. A sociobiologist is a little more difficult to define. Sociobiologyl is a field that applies biology, specifically natural selection, in determining the direction of primate behaviour. It hypothesizes the results of a certain behaviour pattern, assuming that behaviour is genetically determined. Biologists who have applied the principle of natural selection to primate behaviour have hitherto been very satisfied with the accuracy of their hypothesis. Just how much of human behaviour is genetically determined and how much is not? That humans walk bi-pedally, that we sleep at night—these are genetically determined, a result of our evolution. But what other characteristics come from our genes? Research indicates that in most primates the male is the dominant sex. (Hrdy defines dominance as the ability to coerce the behaviour of others.) Newer research indicates that female primates in most species are competitive with one another - fighting over breeding privileges, over feeding areas and to maintain their status within the group. I In 1975 Edmund Wilson put the name to a body of knowledge that had been gathered for some thirty years. His work, Sociobiology: the New Synthesis, was critically dissected by feminists (see Broadside, Dec/Jan 1981). This image of the female primate as passive, complacent to male rule, bitching at one another and furthermore, possibly genetically-disposed in this direction, is easily viewed by the chauvinistic male in the most ill-favoured and fatalistic light. It gives Province columnist Jon Ferry (the macho man) the opportunity to say: "Biology, in short, has been one weapon that the masculine man has used to keep the feminist in her place. " It has allowed anthropologists like Lionel Tiger and popular science writer Desmond Morris to affirm the myth of male superiority. Past research reflected male bias Interestingly, when Hrdy, a feminist, presents identical data we are forced to make some different and more accurate conclusions . Hrdy begins by noting that facts are facts: "That sexes differ is simply true. Men have more muscle mass and are generally bigger. Women have more endurance and they bear children." Nature is not nice—or equal. According to some theories, these differences have given rise to primitive man as hunter, roaming freely, unencumbered by infants, and ready for battle. At the same time, primitive woman stayed at home, presumably to tend the hearth, live longer and feel constrained by the thrall of childbirth. ("Sperm is cheap, eggs come dear", summarizes Birute, who is given to succinct statements.) In the first chapter of her book, Hrdy disposes of some of the worst examples of this kind of erroneous thinking. "The dominant male is obviously the central figure in the group's persistence over time," says Lionel Tiger. They're not. Hrdy's research shows females to be the stabilizing force. Tiger also states: "Women are biologically programmed to not dominate political systems ." Hrdy again dismisses such thinking as false and states, "females are competitive, assertive and...political". One of the reasons this picture has taken so long to emerge is that monkey-viewing has generally been confined to studying the male of the species, especially when observation took place in the wild. Hrdy points out that males are "more conspicuous, more boisterous, their fierce display of aggressiveness captures the attention of the photographer. They were noticed and hence studied more frequently than female behaviour." Without dwelling on it, she also points out that simians were generally studied by male researchers whose biases and interests mirrored the conventional power structure of that time and of the organizations and universities that encouraged the studies. This has changed greatly in recent years. With the advent of more women in the field, the study of female behaviour has become acceptable. "Men studying baboons for example, twenty years ago would have focused on the male baboon. It's the same in medicine—twenty, thirty years ago male doctors would not have seen the importance of studying the menstrual cycle. Now it is studied and consequently we're seeing the results—it's not all in our heads say the television advertisements." Birute feels women are generally more interested in studying the female condition, and even if they weren't, the methodology of the field has also improved vastly in the last decade. It's become harder to ignore all aspects of studying a behaviour problem and still produce acceptable, well- documented research. And, of course, some women like Jane Goodall have worked in the field of female primate behaviour for years. Studies of female behaviour have turned up the following: 1) Primate males are able to dominate females. Only exceptionally do females exercise direct control over male behaviour. 2) Female society among primates is more stable than that of the male. In baboons, for example, the males are transient and their status changes within the various groups. Female baboons remain in their own group throughout their life and their hierarchy is stable and predictable. 3) Females are competitive. In most species all child-bearing females jockey continuously for a place in the troop hierarchy which allows them access to the dominant male, and the prime position in feeding grounds and watering holes. Thus, females tend to compete for resources while males compete for females. Hamadryas baboons &k J a * % These are general tenets, but in fact, behaviour varies widely from species to species. Two striking examples are the differences between hamadryas baboons and gelada. Both species live in complex hierarchical societies, the basic social or foraging unit being a harem of females with usually one male adult. The one male is typically dominant and responsible for breeding, but not the care of infants. Here the similarities end. The female hamadryas leads a sheltered, oppressive existence. Lured from her parents continued on page 8 8 Kinesis May 1982 SOCIOBIOLOGY EQUALITY VS. GENES continued from page 7 at a tender age, she is conditioned by her male captor to unquestioning obedience and is subject to nips, threatening stares, or outright bites on the scruff of the neck. In danger, his large body shelters her smaller one. If she hesitates to follow him she is chased and urged back into the fold. This excessively paternalistic attitude on the part of the male hamadryas ensures reproductive survival in a harsh environment, the arid plateau of Ethiopia. The hamadryass troop without a dominant male is a rudderless collection of females who can scarcely tolerate one another and eventually disperse. Female gelada baboons also congregate, harem-like, around a dominant male, but their kinship with one another is quite different. The females are tightly knit, often related, and their social organization remains unchanged by the coming and goings of males. Should a male choose to rush a female gelada in the same manner as his hamadryas cousin, he is immediately confronted by her snarling and lunging "sisters" and may find himself effecting a rapid retreat. Superficially, the two species seem similar, with female harems organized around a central male. Obviously, though, the position of gelada males in the power structure is considerably weaker than it first appears. Social behaviour always complex Male responsibility for care of infants varies widely between species. Males most likely to invest time in infant care are those who are reasonably sure of their paternity by having a sustained, usually monogamous relationship with the mother (roughly 18% of primates) or a principal, consort relationship. There are exceptions. The barbary macaque, a species characterized by a frenzied sex life and promiscuity, "regularly interacts with infants in a variety of caretaking duties during the infants' first year of life." Most males direct their attention toward one or two specific infants, so that each infant is cared for by several different males. The macaques are unusual in this. And as if to illustrate how complex simian social behaviour can be, this benevolent paternal picture is shattered by observation of the violent, inadequately-explained behaviour of males in the wild—their cruel savaging of infants who are not their own. When a male ape meets or attempts to hijack a group of females in the wild, his first act will be to seize any unweaned infant (almost certainly offspring of previous rivals), kill and often cannibalize them. In response, a female show of solidarity similar to that of the geladas swings into action. Several females, usually those past childbearing age, rush at the bully and may succeed in saving the child. The mother of the unfortunate tyke is often the least upset of anyone at this display and she makes only feeble attempts to protect her progeny. 4*? Hrdy suggests an explanation to this grotesque drama. First, she believes that the trait towards infanticide in males is genetically determined. Males, in attempting to ensure the reproductive success of their own offspring, will destroy all newborns of dubious parentage. The mother's actions appear to condone this behaviour rather than to stop it. As soon as the new male is ensconced as leader of the troop, and after the initial show of agression by some females, they change their tune and respond to his overtures. (Clearly a case of the king is dead, long live the king. ) Within eight days after the death of her infant, the bereaved mother is presenting her pink bottom to the new male in coital pay-off for what can only be called antisocial behaviour. Rank brings stability, social rewards "Why don't females vote with their genes?" asks Hrdy. "Why don't they choose not to mate with this infanticidal tyrant?" A successful Lysistrata campaign could wipe out this gene pool and ensure a higher infant survival rate. The answer is, she can't afford to. She's in a highly competitive position with the other females in the troop. It would not be advantageous to her or her future offspring to withhold sex; a monkey not breeding is a monkey who will lose points in the troop's social hierarchy. Motherhood confers a number of important social and practical rights on the female monkey—and that status is worth striving for. Now you can really show your support for Kinesis ... Be the proud wearer of a Kinesis t-shirt. Assorted colours, short or cap sleeve style, sizes S, M, L and XL Children's sizes too. $8 adult/$6 child. Available soon. Watch for them! As the high-ranking female she will copulate with the male frequently and during her most fertile periods, thus assuring her new infant's protection by the new father. She will feed first, and the most succulent morsels will be prepared in advance by her consort and protector. She will be the first to drink at the watering hole. In harsh terrain, these privileges could save her life. Finally, she will be groomed and attended by her female kin and followers, many of whom will be delighted to act as aunts to any offspring. Thus, benefits from high rank tend to' be more rewarding and more worth fighting for than the silly scrapes of males, and many females will spend a lifetime striving for them, thus providing a stability and organization to the monkey world that would not be otherwise possible. As I write this all I can think of is— bought off againl The temptation is strong at this point to generalize wildly about similarities between simian and human social behaviour. But before we begin bending their behaviour patterns to fit the human condition, let's remember the dangers in assuming ourselves as recipients of a finished evolutionary hand-me-down. "We are probably the only animal that can control our own biology," says Birute. "Some others - chimps, maybe - can create protocultures responsive to change, but we are the only ones'who can make change in our culture. We are not bound by our biology in the way some female monkeys "For example, in many species the females are smaller than the males, they can't defend themselves, their territory is proscribed, they have no options. We have two major options: we have birth control - we can choose not to have children if we want, and we can earn a living independent of men. Evidence shows we're getting physically stronger and bigger, too." Hrdy echoed the same point forcefully during her lecture. "A society, such as the present human society, that tries to legislate equal rights is unique in anthropological terms." Equality between the sexes is not a process we can leave up to natural selection. Instead we must fight for it "consciously, with intelligence, stubborness and courage." Hrdy also reminds us how fragile equality can be. "Should it collapse, it is far from certain that the scaffolding needed to surmount oppressive natural and cultural barriers could ever be pieced together again." May 1982 Kinesis REVIEWS Protection a rare commodity for battered women by Gayla Reid Having grown up in a society in which children can be beaten soundly for their own good and women fall down the stairs, we know that battered women need protection from their violent husbands. We know, too, that such protection is hard to find. How can we make adequate protection a reality? In proposing answers to that question, A Study of Protection for Battered Women, a new publication from the Women's Research Centre in Vancouver, does more than prove ' that a woman who is abused by her husband will be abused again when she turns to the criminal justice system. The study also pushes forward the feminist offensive on male violence by providing and examining workable models of legal, social service and health care practices which would afford a battered woman better protection. _ A Study of Protection for Battered Women Women's Research Centre, 237pp, 1982 $8 individuals, $10 institutions. Price covers cost of duplicating and postage. Contact the Women's Research Centre at #301-2515 Burrard St., Vancouver, B.C. V6J 3J6. The study begins with battered women themselves. The women explain what happens when they go to the police, to the JPs, j to the courts, to the counsellors and, all too often, back one more time to their violent husbands. Some women find a transition house and a way out. But others—one in every five murder victims—do not go looking for justice again. Confusion rampant in legal system The study moves on to interview representatives from every level of the criminal justice system, from police dispatchers to judges. It's all here, including information about: * the process of laying charges * the function of the justices of the peace * a comparison of criminal court and family court * sentencing What emerges from the extensive interviews is an indictment of the criminal justice system by its own members. They describe a system which seems at worst pernicious, and at best, something of a shambles. Confusion is rampant. Members of different sections of the system appear unfamiliar with each other's roles and often distrust each other's decision. When it comes to wife assault, the cops don't trust the courts and they certainly don't trust the assault provisions of the Criminal Code. Family court representatives see criminal court as a place where "the guy gets less static, the victim gets less protection". Criminal court workers see family court as being too namby-pamby with batterers. And on and on. It's a mess. And nobody, it seems, trusts the women. I was amazed the police report was so short. They told me to go to family court. My lawyer refused. They said, "Go downstairs, then." The man at the desk would not accept the charge. He said there was no proof. I had on a turtleneck sweater—typical for a battered woman, hiding the marks. Nothing was done. I went to family court. They said, "Get a doctor's report". Then back to family court. I saw a counsellor who said, "Why are you seeing me? You should see a J.P. " This from a woman who had been tied up and raped, who had lost consciousness twice. One consistent theme in the maze of confusion is this: wife assault is not really a crime. When your husband beats you up, it's somehow not as serious as an incident of stranger-to-stranger violence. Dictator in his own castle, the husband rules supreme, an arm's length away from the Criminal Code provisions on assault. .jhI fe jBiiT pt* JH y Jf V.H '■'.:i Indicative of this attitude is the use of the vague generic term "domestic dispute". The study points out that when a call about wife assault comes into a police station, it's classified as a "domestic" or "family dispute". This useless umbrella phrase covers everything from a fight between two armed neighbours to a landlord-tenant shouting match, from a woman being beaten by her husband to an argument between friends. "Domestic dispute" is, of course, sibling to the coy and deceitful term "spousal abuse". (Heaven forbid that our language admit these are crimes committeed by men against women. ) When police do respond to "domestics", they don't even know if they're going to be dealing with wife assault. Their characteristic response to wife assault situations is, it turns out, one of non- arrest. The frequent withdrawal of charges by battered women is typically met with a mixture of chagrin and resentment on the part of police. Perhaps worse than the ignorance is the indifference. A family court prosecutor admitted, "At family court, you get hardened to family violence. You forget about the victim." And at criminal court, "the prosectuors literally prepare the common assault in the elevator." The interviews indicate that the most common sentencing decisions are probation with a suspended sentence or conditional discharge. Legal protections proposed by the authors of A Study of Protection: * A mandatory response by police to wife assault calls (which would not be classified vaguely as "domestic disputes"). * A mandatory arrest policy according to guidelines more consistent with the Criminal Code. (There is also provision for a non-arrest option, where appropriate .) * A central registry of restraining orders and peace bonds, to facilitate enforcement of such orders. * A reverse onus provision in the show- cause bail hearings to determine whether the accused batterer should be released on bail. * No diversion of criminal assault charges to family court. (The intent of family court, the interviews reveal, is to protect not the woman but her relationship with the batterer.) * A scheme of minimum and graduated sentencing, with no conditional discharges. Because discretion was found to operate against the battered woman in most cases, discretion would be eliminated as much as possible. These recommendations were shown to people at every level of the justice system. Their generally positive responses, together with the details of the recommendations themselves, will be of tremendous interest to anyone working with battered women. Doctors don't ask about battering As the report points out, improvements in the criminal justice system alone will not be enough to protect the woman who is being beaten. Accordingly, the researchers also interviewed people working in the areas of health and social services and drew up appropriate recommendations for change. Few health professionals ask a battered woman if she is being hit. Medical, public health and mental health practitioners who were interviewed agreed that "doctors don't ask the question, so the referral never happens." Too often, the battered woman is described as "a depression with relationship problems." The attitudes of health professionals towards wife assault "are shaped by training Which is family or individual oriented, socially non-interventionist and focussed on the needs of children over the needs of their battered mothers." Any reference made by a woman to abuse probably means there is a lot more going on, said one psychologist, who added: It's important to be very clear, as a therapist, about your judgements about him to her. You must be clear to her that you think he is wrong in hitting her ...you have to let her know that over and over again. Improvements in the medical response to wife assault would include the development of better interview and assessment skills, and explicit guidelines for emergency room staff, private practice physicians, public health staff, community mental health staff and therapists. The battered woman is invisible not only to workers in the health field. To social service workers as well, the battered woman is no one's real responsibility. Ministry of Human Resources workers often do not assess battering as a problem; or if they do, they see it as falling outside the Ministry's mandate of supporting the family unit. Essential services which the Ministry could provide (such as childcare and monies for clothing) are often unavailable continued on page 14 10 Kinesis May 1982 May 1982 Kinesis 11 NUCLEAR POWER Nuclear testing in Pacific Ocean has brought radiation and destruction to a former paradise by Peta Joyce "Come choose your own paradise island," the advertisement says. "Miles of golden beaches untouched by human foot, and the most beautiful coral reefs in the world." The tourist literature inviting you to holiday in the Marshall Islands conjures up all the usual images of a Pacific Paradise, and indeed the Marshall Islands are beautiful, but danger lurks beneath the crystal-clear waters, lies waiting on the sun-washed beaches... Nuclear testing started here Since 194-6, over 180 atomic and hydrogen bombs have been detonated in the Pacific region, by the United States, Britain and France, and 66 of those were in the Marshall Islands. These tiny islands in the Northwest Pacific, administered by the United States as a United Nations Trust Territory since 1947, were the first to experience nuclear testing. In 194-6, just six months after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, United States Navy officials chose Bikini Atoll as an "ideal" testing site. Its population of 167 people were moved 125 miles east to uninhabited Rongerik Atoll. Because the Americans told the Bikinians that they would be able to return to their island when the tests were over, they chose to go to Rongerik even though it had meagre land and lagoon resources compared to Bikini. Meanwhile, two atomic bombs about the size of that dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, were expoloded at Bikini, and the United States Navy decided that Enewetak Atoll would also be used for testing. The 145 people who lived on Enewetak were taken to a much smaller atoll, Ujelang, and testing continued on Bikini and Enewetak Atolls for several years. Bomb dropped without warning In 1954 a series of tests included "Bravo", a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb blast, which contaminated all the islands east of Bikini with radioactive fallout. Within hours of the blast, a "gritty white ash" began to fall. On Rongelap the ash was two inches deep, and by nightfall the people began to experience severe vomiting and diarrhea. At no stage were there any official warnings of the test, nor any notification of precautions to take. More than 48 hours after their exposure, 28 United States Air Force and Army men stationed at a weather monitoring station on Rongerik were evacuated along with the 64 people on Rongelap. In all 264 people were eventually evacuated to the Kwajelein Navy base. They experienced the symptoms of severe radiation exposure: itching and burning skin, vomiting and diarrhea, skin burns and loss of hair. The Rongelap people, after three months of examination and treatment on Kwajalein were temporarily resettled on another atoll, while others returned to their contaminated islands. After the Bravo test, the off-limits zone around Bikini was increased by eight times, and included inhabited atolls, although no people were ever evacuated before subsequent tests. In 1957 the Rongelap people returned home, their atoll having been pronounced "safe" for habitation, "in spite of slight lingering radioactivity". A United States Brookhaven National Laboratory report stated that "the habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings". The United States concluded its nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands in 1958, but more was to come. In 1959 Kwajalein was chosen as the testing site for nuclear missiles. Marshallese still fight for compensation Apart from the immediate effects of nuclear testing, the Marshall Islands people have suffered in other ways. The Bikinians, concerned about the meagre resources on Rongerik, made the first of many requests to return home just two months after their arrival. Two years and many hardships later, they were moved to a temporary camp for seven months before being resettled on Kili, a fertile island but with no lagoon or safe anchorage. The Bikinians, like other islanders who were hurriedly resettled with little time to establish housing and gardens, and to make fishing equipment, became dependent on the infrequent and unreliable Trust Territory supply ships. Many times people were left for months without basic supplies, having to eat the copra which was their only source of income. With a long history of protests, petitions, and law suits behind them, the Marshallese are still fighting for adequate compensation, or the return of their ancestral lands, and for the right to be treated as equals in their own country. Some will never be able to return home; a 1978 Northern Marshalls radiological survey, forced by a law suit in 1975 by the Bikinians, reveals that "Bikini Island could not be used by the people of Bikini for at least the next 30 years and possibly the next 60 years." Meanwhile the Bikinians are still searching for a satisfactory place to live. There is one thing the Marshallese cannot fight for: their health. Four years after their exposure to radioactive fallout, the rate of stillbirths and miscarriages among Rongelap women rose to more than twice the rate in unexposed Marshallese women. Thyroid tumours widespread There were problems on other islands too. Minji Kel from Utirik Atoll: "...Several of my babies who were healthy at the time they were born died before they were a year old...Altogether I lost four babies. My son Winton was born just one year after the bomb, and he has had two operations on his throat for thyroid cancer." Nine years after their exposure in 1954, the first thyroid tumours began appearing among the Rongelap people, and there was a higher than normal incidence of growth retardation in the young. By 1966, 52% of the 29 children who were under ten years old in 1954 had devloped thyroid abnormalities. Furthermore, the body levels of radioactivity of Rongolapese who were not exposed in 1954j but who had moved back to Rongelap in 1957, were found to be the same as those who were exposed, which indicates the level of contamination on the island. - In 1976, a medical report showed that 69% of the Rongelap children under ten years old, and 35% of the total population exposed in 1954, had developed thyroid tumours. However, the people of Utirik, whose original exposure was less than one twelfth of the Rongelap peoples', suddenly showed a higher rate of thyroid cancer. A Brookhaven Laboratory medical report pointed out that the Rongelap children received doses of radiation high enough to kill many body cells, whereas at lower doses, as in the Utirik people, "a greater number of cells would be spared for malignant transformation". Americans still claim islands are "safe" In 1978, 20 years after the nuclear testing stopped, the Department of Energy revealed that ten other islands (of about not even a body there." The women call them jellyfish babies. Sometimes the doctors won't even let them see their babies. Darlene was born on Ebeye, an indigenous labour camp for Kwajalein workers and their dependants. 8,000 people live on 66 acres of land, in substandard housing, with no recreational facilities except for a basketball court and a baseball field, and a poorly equipped, maintained and staffed hospital. There is one Trust Territory and one volunteer doctor. Nearby Kwajalein has a population of 3,000 Americans, with air-conditioned housing, a high school, tennis and handball courts, swimming pools, parks, a golf In 1957 the Rongelap people returned home, their atoll having been pronounced "safe" for habitation, "in spite of slight lingering radioactivity". A U.S. Brookhaven National Laboratory report stated that "the habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings. " 1600 people) were contaminated with radioactive fallout. Unlike most Marshallese, who have never been told about the effects of radiation on themselves, their children, or their environment, Darlene Keju knows that the whole of the Marshall Islands is contaminated, because of the health problems that her people are experiencing. Two years ago she returned from her studies in Public Health in Hawaii to investigate, and found many problems never before experienced in the islands. Apart from health problems such as sores, tumours, thyroid disorders, stillbirths, miscarriages and deformed babies, staple crops such as arrowroot and breadfruit are dying out or are difficult to grow. The women told her that they had many miscarriages at seven months, or, if the baby was full term, "something" was born; "... it's moving, it's breathing, but there is no eyes, there is no arms, there is course, bowling alley, teen club and free movies. There are seven American-trained doctors. On Ebeye, Darlene has to obtain a pass to get to Kwajalein, and she was forbidden entry once to see her brother even though she had obtained a pass. Marshallese cannot shop for the cheaper goods on Kwajalein, nor send their children to high school even though Ebeye doesn't have one. Darlene was seven years old when she first experienced a nuclear bomb. She was at a birthday party, and the minister who was just about to bless the child and the food when the bomb went off, told them it was the end of the world. The whole island glowed orange and red as Darlene ran home to find her parents. She wanted to know if they were going to heaven or hell. Now, 23 years later, Darlene has had one tumour removed from her shoulder, and still has three others in her body. . . The Americans still say that the islands are "safe", and that there are no problems for those not directly affected by the radiation. Darlene points out that these problems occur all over the Marshall Islands, including areas that the Americans claim were not contaminated. "So what does this mean to a Marshallese? Not only that some of our bodies, some of our relatives, some of our friends, have gone, but also it means to us that we are now dying out slowly. We know that there is no cure for us." The Marshallese have limited health care; once a year the Department of Energy carries out a medical survey of the Islands, and people needing treatment are sent to Hawaii or the United States. The doctors tell them, "...there is nothing wrong, nothing to worry about, your ticket is paid for, we have a translator waiting for you, have a good time on the mainland." Islanders exploited for radiation data Darlene's statment is backed up by Reuben Merliss, an American doctor who visited the Marshall Islands in 1980. "The people ...have no great faith in these (Dept. of Energy) physicians...1 am also impressed with the failure of the physicians to communicate findings and prognosis to the people... These basic rights of a patient have been in a large part ignored...I found very few Marshallese who were acquainted with the nature of their pathology. I reject firmly the thought that the people were too primitive or uneducated to absorb such information, since I have found this not to be true." The Marshallese have made repeated requests for an independent medical survey. In 1971 a Japanese medical team was prevented by the Americans from travelling to Rongelap and Utirik because of "visa" problems. Although over 200 million dollars have been spent on "clean-up" operations, Darlene believes that this is not to make the islands "safe" to live, but so that the Marshallese will return to their own homes to provide human data on the possible effects of nuclear war. The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory study on Bikini in 1977 stated that "Bikini may be the only global source of data on humans where intake via ingestion is thought to contribute the major fraction of plutonium body burden...It is possibly the best available source of data for evaluating the transfer of plutonium across the gut wall after being incorporated into biological systems." "Come together and fight like hell" Darlene is fighting for awareness of the problems of the Marshall Islanders, and of other Pacific peoples. "The time has come for Pacific Islanders to come together and fight like hell. I'm tired of having outsiders coming in and treating me like a guinea-pig... of lawyers and anthropologists representing me...It stinks, but they do it because we give them the power...Stop depending on outsiders, they will screw you like they have screwed us." "Sooner or later I will disappear," says Darlene, "and in 20 or 30 years from now the Tahitians will face the same problems. We must learn from each other." Meanwhile, in 1981 the Marshall Islands Government was approached by the Japanese about the possibility of using Bikini Atoll to "store" nuclear waste. The tourist agencies are keen to continue the exploitation; come pick your own island... Marie-Therese Danielsson confirms that there is already an unusually high rate of thyroid problems in Tahiti, but there are no official figures; the French stopped all health statistics before the bomb tests started, and there has been no information since. But she knows that large numbers of Tahitians are sent to France, Australia, and New Zealand every year for medical treatment. Ocean pollution poses serious hazard If these problems are already appearing in Tahiti, what about the rest of the Pacific? As Darlene says, "If our area of the ocean is polluted, the whole Pacific is polluted." The New Zealand National Radiation Laboratory figures show that New Zealand received both tropospheric (highly radioactive, short-lived fission products in the lower atmosphere, including iodine- 131) and stratospheric radioactive fallout (long-term fission products in the upper atmosphere, including strontium-90) from the French tests. The wide grazing habit of cows leads to the concentration of some of these radiation products in milk, and so milk is another useful indicator. Iodine-131 is important because it is selectively absorbed into the thyroid. Children, because of their small thyroids, receive higher doses than adults from the same intake (hence the large number of thyroid problems in Marshallese children). Iodine-131 becomes concentrated in milk, and children are also likely to have a higher daily consumption of fresh milk. Strontium-90 is deposited with calcium in human bone. The levels of strontium-90 in food indicate both the rate of stratospheric fallout and the accumulated ground deposits. Whereas rainwater levels of strontium-90 have steadily decreased since the French atmospheric tests stopped, the levels in milk have not decreased at the same rate. Thus radiation products, absorbed from the soil by everything that is grown on land, are still entering our bodies through the food chain. Frightening though this is, the effects of nuclear pollution in the ocean, and in fish, may be even more serious. What effect is this already having on us and our children? What relevance does the American finding that lower doses of radiation produced a higher rate of cancer in the Marshallese have for us? While the Western world is preparing for the possibility of nuclear war, people in the Pacific are already dying from it. For further information see Marshall Islands, a Chronology: 1944-1981, available from the Micronesia Support Committee, 1212 University Avenue, Honolulu, Hawaii 96826. Cost $4.00/copy airmail. This article is reprinted from the April 1982 issue of the New Zealand feminist magazine Broadsheet. The author was reporting from the Independent and Nuclear Free Pacific Conference held recently in Suva, Fiji. Contact Broadsheet by writing P.O. Box 5799, Auckland, New Zealand. Subs are $19.50/year ($26.75/yr airmail). 12 Kinesis May 1982 CULTURE Sabotage explores women's journey out of patriarchy by Michele Wollstonecroft What are the choices for North American women artists who want to explore a more harmonious, collective, ritual form of creative expression without completely giving up modern values and technologies? This is the dilemma Sabotage addresses. Sabotage, a video installation exhibited at Open Space Gallery in Victoria from March 16 to April 3, was created by three Vancouver artists: Barbara Swail, Wendy Solloway and L.E. (Freddy) Fraser. around us. The installation includes a series of video (TV) monitors and "found objects" such as a garden trellis, newspapers, wire, a painting, blueprints, articles of clothing (pink), clotheslines, masks and construction materials. The layout of the piece is based on two triangles. The "inner triangle" is drawn on the floor with orange tape, the angles of which harbour the video monitor constructions. These works are built up from Sabotage attempts to lead the viewer on a journey from traditional patriarchal culture, through times of change, into an ideal world. The artists mold this concept with materials as well as construction techniques into a whole, the whole being a journey. The artists state: "We are women who came together to create a video work reflective of the feminine experience of this world. Women are emerging from centuries of masculine defined culture. We see it as a culture of sabotage. As we move out of and away from our cultural origins, in the effort to create a new context and style of being, we leave behind everything that ever offered a support. "It is necessary to move through confusion, doubt, anxiety; a turbulent time of testing, questioning, discarding and reforming before emerging with the material to build and create a new context" with room for feminine and masculine qualities of living. We are looking ahead with this in mind." Compositionally, Sabotage leads us out of the world of structural categories of painting, sculpture, fabric art and video and into a wider appreciation of the world the floor. The "outer triangle" is drawn on the floor in silver "gaffer" tape, its sides marked by clotheslines hanging above and behind the monitors. Attached to the lines are clothes, blueprints and masks, which hanging towards the floor imply walls. Upon first seeing this installation, I was reminded of Native Indian cultural themes. At Open Space, Sabotage was nestled into a spot halfway down the gallery space. It appeared as a teepee would if set up in a clearing and like a teepee,the piece is totally self-contained. In one corner stands a "totem", made from a pile of video monitors, stacked one upon the other. In the second corner, a monitor and a bright orange construction pylon sit atop an assemblage of crumbling grey cement blocks. This entire assemblage is swathed in grey gauze-like material which rises above the clotheslines, appearing as a sort of fire-place with smoke billowing into the air. The third corner, the "ideal", has a monitor woven into a web of black and yellow cords and a wooden lattice. This piece sits on a torn painting of blues and orange, suggesting fluidity. Objects hung from the lines imply sky, while the structures built up from the floor suggest the earth. The artists see the"totem" corner of the piece as representing women's place within the patriarchy. The "confusion, doubt, anxiety" are represented by the "fireplace" corner, while the "ideal" corner is a woven web. The journey begins with the "totem", moves through the "fireplace" and ends with the "ideal". Inner triangle evokes urban scenery My impression of Sabotage changed when I entered the "inner triangle". What becomes apparent from this point of view are piles of discarded televisions, a crumbling cement wall, graffiti, newspapers and bits of wire strewn about the floor. The- installation becomes a 20th century urban scene - a back alley experience of looking over clotheslines into someone's yard. An apocalyptic inference is added to the atmosphere by the masks which hang from one of the lines. One is a black masquerade mask, one a skull-like hockey mask, and the third a (plastic) woman's face. It is a video tape displayed on the monitors, however, which gives direction to Sabotage. On the opening night of the installation, the artists staged a "performance" which they taped. That tape is displayed simultaneously on three monitors in the installation (one at each corner of the inner triangle) once the player is turned on. The viewer has the choice of listening to sound from all three monitors (omnipresent), or turning down the sound on the others and listening to only one. The viewer also has the choice of watching the tape all the way through to the end on one monitor, or of turning her head and moving into the next part of the tape on another set. Each monitor is adjusted to a colour balance congruent with the particular colours used in that corner of the triangle. The "totem" monitor, for instance, displays] a pink colour balance emulating the pink clothes on the line behind. The "fireplace" monitor is adjusted to grey tones with occasional streaks of orange, while the "ideal" monitor is balanced for blues and oranges found in the painting on the floor in front of it. Sound gives form to environment The tape begins with artists Wendy, Barbara and Freddy entering the installation space wearing masks, which they remove and hang on the line. From here Barbara takes over the camera work, Wendy begins playing her bass guitar and Freddy starts drawing in her notebook. The camera follows the installation from the "totem" towards the "ideal", incorporating shots of Wendy and Freddy as they perform. In moving from Freddy's drawings back to the clotheslines, the camera connects the work-in-process with the components of the_installation. The visual effects of the video are particularly interesing around the "fireplace" piece. The cement block are back-lit, thus light and shadow coming through the blocks and the gauze cause a glowing "halo" effect on the screen. continued on page 14 CULTURE May 1982 Kinesis 13 P4W proves that a true story tells itself When the film P4W had its Vancouver premiere in March, Pat Feindel was there to interview filmmakers Janis Cole and Holly Dale. Janis and Holly have worked together for six years, and have produced the following films: Cream Soda, Minimum Charge No Cover, Thin Line, and P4W (Prison for Women). Pat: I've only seen two of your four films, but it seems you prefer the documentary format. Can you tell me why? Janis: Well, we got into documentary right at the beginning so we've stuck with that, but we plan on doing dramas in the future. In fact, we've written a feature script and we're now writing a TV script. We think the experience of getting to know people really well through documentary will help when we're characterizing people in dramatic situations. Pat: How do you go about deciding what your subject is going to be — what sort of criteria duo you use? For example, when you did this film, did you decide you wanted to do something specifically on prisons and women? Holly: I think what we do is take people that society labels as social deviants or stereotypes and show them as people, that they're not that different from you and I except that they've chosen a path in life that's a bit different. Janis: From the first, we wanted to focus on the women and not the prison — I mean, the prison's going to come into it because that's where they are — but the thing was always to present them as people and focus on them rather than the system. I think the system becomes evident just through getting to know them. Pat: It's interesting then that it's be come a kind of political film. Did you anticipate that? Janis: '(laughter) No, that's just the way it went. The way we make films is we just present the material the way we actually experience it. Holly: .the way it i i presented to i Janis: ...so what happens is people are able to make their own kind of political conclusion from it. Different people see it different ways and whatever is important to them, that's what they focus on. Holly: You see, documentary filmmakers tend to go into a place, observe it, formulate their opinions and then make a film that throws their opinions on the audience. We go into a place, observe it, and try to stay as true as we can to the material as it was presented to us. That way.we're not really making any statements but subsequently the film makes a lot of statements because people are able to make up their own minds, so that a lot more than just a slanted manipulated opinion comes through. Pat: So your objective was mostly to present the people as human instead of as stereotypes. Did you have any notions about what kind of changes you would want to occur or how you would want the audience to react? Holly: No, no. Of course, we want the audience to like the film or feel they've gotten something out of the film — the word "like" is strange to use in these kinds of films. But we never want to keep them from having their own freedom of thinking the way they want. Like Maggie in the film, who's a double murderer — some people will look at her and say, "I felt sympathy for her"; some people will look at her and say, "She should be locked up forever because she's killed twice". Pat: When you were making the film, what were your own impressions of the women? Did you form judgments of your own that you had to make an effort to keep out of the film? Janis: We tried to keep our own judgments out of the film, but you do form judgments from getting to know people. For instance, I think Janice's situation was a real shame. I think her sentence is definitely too long for her involvement. We read all the transcripts on her case and researched it in full, and it seems to me it was a very political thing that she ended up getting 25 years in prison. Pat: Your film is being seen by a really varied audience — from prison inmates to people who breeze into Robson Square Media Centre. I wonder if .you anticipated that? Holly: No, we didn't anticipate that wide a range of audience at all. Pat: Before you shot the film, did you do much scripting? Holly: No, we don't script our films at all. What we do is we go in, we find out as much as we can about a person, we read their transcripts, we go to the library and look up the court report, we speak to the court reporters. We get all the background we can and then we find out what is the key thing to this person's life and situation here. In Maggie's case it was her children and being a battered wife. And we just focus in, we write our questions around what we want to get out of them. We think of the best way to phrase it to get the feeling we want. For example, when Maggie was dusting (her dresser) and the card (from her son) was there, I said to her, "Why don't you read "What we do is take people that society labels social deviants or stereotypes and show them as people, that they're not that different from you and I except that they've chosen a path in life that's a bit different." the card for us?" She didn't expect that — we didn't tell her in advance, we're going to get you to read the card or anything. So she just picked it up and all of a sudden she was...well, naked because her emotions were there and she was trying to hold them back, but she couldn't quite hold them back. Those kinds of things, the spontaneity of the situation, are what we're looking for. Pat: What difficult editing decisions did you make and how were they affected by your initial goal in making the film? Janis: Okay, we shoot a lot of cinema verite and direct cinema, so we tried to string it out in the order we'd shot it, and that was anti-climactic. So we started reworking it, and tried to present it in the way we felt the experience, which was going in and thinking things aren't too bad here, and there's some neat people and it's kind of fun. Then we got to know more about them and why they were there — some more emotional stuff — and it became very frustrating towards the end. We saw the frustrations in dealing with the everyday petty things and dealing with the prison itself, so we structured it that way. And I think what happens is it gives it a sort of dramatic feeling, a story feeling, because you have a beginning, middle and end. Holly: We don't feel a documentary should just be informative. We feel it should be entertaining. You should be able to laugh and cry. Pat: You chose not to use any kind of narration... Holly: Yes. To us that's telling people what to think. We've used narration but it was used for the effect. We really refrain from it unless it's part of the art process. Pat: In the two films I've seen (Cream Soda, P4W) your subjects are women. Would you call yourselves feminist filmmakers? Janis: Well, you missed the two where one is totally about men and the other is pretty well equally about men and women. Holly: ...transvestites and transexuals. No, we think of ourselves as filmmakers first. If we said we were feminist filmmakers we would be hypocrites, because the whole reason we make films about the people we do, is we hate labels. To label ourselves as feminist filmmakers puts us in a slot, and that's the one thing we try to break down in our filmmaking. continued on page 15 14 Kinesis May 1982 PROTEST SABOTAGE continued from page 12 - Feedback, achieved by aiming the recording video camera into a monitor, creates a whirling of colours on the screen - repeating the fluidity found in the painting on the floor and carrying through the sense of a graphic language established by the wire, cords, graffiti and Freddy's drawings. The sound created by Wendy's bass guitar is a low, slow resonant sound that Wendy describes as "drone and funk". Standing within the "inner triangle", the sound feels like a heartbeat, giving the illusion that the piece is a living organism. The sound gives form to the environment, providing a space in time for the performance, as well as a vehicle for the camera and the drawing. When the music ends, the performance is over. The performance itself is rather like a "jam session" among musicians, except that in this case two of the participants are on camera and drawing. Many elements of Sabotage can be read quite literally. For example, the artists expressed several times when interviewed that they feel vulnerable with Sabotage. They are put "on the line" - their "unmasking" at the beginning of the performance is a metaphor for their public unmasking in the Sabotage piece. Another example of literal elements is the "totem" piece, which has powercords hanging unplugged in various places. This could be understood as the powerlessness of women in the patriarchy. In contrast, the "ideal" piece has many cords and connections threaded between the monitor and its surrounding space. A heavy orange cord folded in front of the "ideal" monitor implies an abundance of power. Wendy, Barbara and Freddy were brought together to work on this installation by the Open Space Collaboratory Program. L.E. (Freddy) Fraser studied at Emily Carr College of Art. She has exhibited her work at, among other places, Robson Square and Presentation House. Freddy has worked in theatre as well, doing lighting, costumes and scene painting. She has won both Helen Pitt and B.C. Cultural Fund Scholarship awards, and currently works as a freelance artist. Wendy Solloway is a performing musician, currently playing bass with the "Persist- ers", a Vancouver women's band. She has a Bachelor of Musical Arts Degree and has played publicly in Canada and the U.S. Wendy has also worked as a composer and performer for the National Film Board and the C.B.C. Barbara Swail attending Emily Carr College of Art, and has an Educational Media Diploma from Capilano College. She has taught video production for the Winnipeg School Board, and has produced educational and community oriented tapes for such groups as Metro Media and the Department of Health and Welfare. Sabotage marks the first time these artists have collaborated, and it appears they have plans to continue working together. Women artists and audiences in Vancouver would do well to request a Sabotage installation in this city. BATTERED WOMEN continued from page 9 to battered women due to variations in policy interpretations. As in the legal and health fields, lack of policy, funds and staff frustrates those conscientious individuals (and there are more than a few) who do understand the seriousness of wife assault and are battling to do something about it. Recommendations to the Ministry for more adequate protection for battered women include the development of a comprehensive intensive training program for social, financial aid and family support workers. The program would be aimed "at increasing their awareness of the nature and severity of the problem, and helping equip workers to intervene appropriately in battering situations." There is evidence of solid, well-informed research throughout A Study of Protection for Battered Women. In many ways, the work is an extension of Battered and Blamed, a 1980 publication of the Women's Research Centre which examined wife assault from the perspective of battered women. The changes proposed in this study are concrete, specific and possible. Neither absurdly Utopian nor merely attitudinal, they would make a difference to the daily lives of thousands of battered women. Subscriptions to the Women's Research Centre are available at $J0/year. Subscribers receive copies of new publications. Mail subscriptions to: #301-2515 Burrard St., Vancouver, V6J 3J6. May 1982 Kinesis 15 REVIEWS A Time to Rise documents farmworkers' struggle to organize by Gayle McGee B.C. farm owners have a magic recipe for cheap labour. Its main ingredient, a labour pool which is largely immigrant, female, and if possible ethnically, racially and linguistically separate from the mainstream of Canadian life. A Time to Rise Produced and directed by Anand Patwardhan and James Munro Colour, 16mm, 40 min., 1981 Unlike most recipes, however, the aim is to keep the ingredients disorganized. This is where the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) and the filmmakers of A Time to Rise seem determined to spoil the cuisine. A Time To Rise is a film which documents the struggle of the Canadian Farmworkers Union to organize the largely South Asian farm labour force in the Fraser Valley. But it's more than just,a documentary of an important event in B.C.'s labour history. Because it shows how the union was built, A Time to Rise is being used by the CFU as an organizing tool in both the Fraser and Okanagan Valleys. It's also an educational tool suitable for both adults and children. The B.C. Teachers Federation is currently developing curriculum guides for the film for grades eight and eleven. Film produced under difficult conditions A Time To Rise is an inspiration for all film artists who want to use their medium to give voice to those who are rarely heard. Nettie Wild, sound engineer of A Time to Rise, has described the satisfaction that making the film gave the crew. The crew is to be commended, in fact, for producing a technically high-quality film under difficult conditions. It is appropriate that A Time to Rise was the first Canadian film to win the Silver Dove award at the Leipzig Festival in West Germany. Even if the crew had set out simply to document the founding of Canada's first farmworker-only union, the results would have been worthwhile. But A Time to Rise also informs us of issues which concern farmworkers: piece-work rates, labour contracting systems, lack of job security, non-existent or ignored safety regulations, and unsanitary working and living conditions . We are shown the barriers farmworkers encounter in organizing, such as violently anti-union farm owners and the necessity for organizing over fences and from public roadways to avoid trespassing charges. White male farm hands describe the racist reasoning of those who want to discourage them from joining the largely Punjabi- speaking union. One scene showing a fieldworker who decides to join her peers in a union march reflects the uncertainty most new members feel. torieal interest. The curriculum work of the B.C. Teachers Federation, for example, will be wasted if more copies of this film aren't available soon. The National Film Board recently bought distribution rights to A Time to Rise. Yet almost a year after its completion, the film is still not available from the NFB's Vancouver office. A call placed to the NFB office in Vancouver in early April revealed that no ship- Pritam Kaur's determination in describing her support for the union as she prepares to leave her basement suite to catch a 6 a.m. bus for the fields is nothing short of inspirational. This scene and others show how the women in the film face the problems shared by women generally, plus more. Homemaking and childcare add to the demands of fieldwork. Sometimes tragedy results, as when three young children wandered away from their parents and drowned in an irrigation ditch. Such stories only emphasize the irony of one farmer's suggestion that fieldwork is ideal for women because they can be close to their children while working in the fields. He seems to confuse the daily employment necessary to support a family with a Sunday outing. Perhaps the greatest frustration with this film is the National Film Board's inability to distribute it adequately. A Time to Rise is a high-calibre film, but timing is important if it is to be of more than his- ping date was available, which meant the film could arrive in "a couple of weeks or a couple of months". The NFB's only circulating copy is based in Ontario. Such limited distribution is inexcusable. Groups and individuals should phone or write their local NFB office asking if the film is available. Perhaps if there is enough demand, the NFB bureaucracy can be sped up. In the meantime, a copy of A Time to Rise is available from IDERA, 2524 Cypress St., Vancouver (phone 738-8815). IDERA charges $30 film rental to community groups and $60 to educational institutions. Since A Time to Rise is booked almost solid for a month and a half in advance, it's advisable to book early. For those who live in the Lower Mainland, the Canadian Farmworkers Union will send their copy of the film along with a speaker, or they will tell you where it's being screened near you. Rental rates are approximately the same as IDERA's. Contact the union at 430-6055. P4W continued from page 13 Janis: We weren't even making the film for theatrical release when we made it. Holly: It just went that way. The most amazing experience was when we showed it at the Festival of Festivals in Toronto. All our screenings were sold out and at the third one everybody was lined up outside; the police had to break it up. Then we went inside the theatre and there are all these "gold badge" people, 80 people in the audience. You have to pay $1000 to have a gold badge, right? And we just cracked up because there was $80,000 worth of passes watching a $40,000 picture! Janis: That < audience. : probably our strangest How did you get funding for the film? Holly: First of all, the Ontario Arts Council, then Canada Council. We went to Studio D, the women's studio at the National Film Board, for processing and work- printing. We didn't pay ourselves. Pat: How did you decide on the distribution method? Janis: John Katz, who programmed it at the Festival of Festivals in Toronto, suggested we should distribute the film theatrically and suggested Pan-Canadian as the best distribution house in Canada for 16 mm. films. Holly: We were talked into it basically. We didn't really see the potential but -it's there. Janis: We wanted to do it, of course. We were very excited about them approaching us — it's just we hadn't planned on that, so it was a bit of a surprise. Holly: We've shown in theatres like this before, but we haven't had a "commercial" run. Janis: We haven't had popcorn at our films before. Pat: How do you distribute your other films? Janis: They're distributed through the Canadian Filmmakers' Distribution Centre. They have an office in Toronto and one in Vancouver. Janis: Is this uh...I hate to put the label on it, but is this for a feminist ...uh tabloid? 16 Kinesis May 1982 HEALTH If stress kills, how come I'm not dead yet? by Helen Potrebenko The theory of stress says, among other things, that modern living is incompatible with good health. Referring to animals, the theory goes that under stress, animals get an extra shot of adrenalin which prepares them for the emergency. This is known as the fight or flight reaction. With the extra adrenalin and extra tension, the animal is prepared to react quickly. The stress theory says that people suffer from this because they are hormonally prepared for either fight or flight and then do neither but just hang around typing or talking. This is supposed to give rise to a whole host of diseases including ulcers, eczema, heart disease and cancer, but excluding Bright's disease, gonorrhea and bunions. The first problem with this theory is that the evidence from animals is fallacious. Animals rarely either fight or flee in an emergency. What they mostly do is stand around shaking. A deer usually deals with men or wolves by standing very still in a place where The definition, besides being all-encompassing, is also internally contradictory. Pain is stressful; so might its absence be. Boredom might be the greatest stress of all. In practice, stress does not get defined as simply anything. In articles and lectures, stress usually includes those things which make you feel bad and leaves out those things which make you happy. I forget what the term for this is, it might be tautology: the situation in which the definition incorporates the conclusion. In other words, if you accept the definition, no other conclusion is possible. Stress is that which is bad for you; anything that is bad for you is stress. One could just as easily call it X. X is everything, but in practice, X is what makes you feel bad. I am suffering from X today, otherwise why would I be writing this. X is anti-X; the absence of X is also X. When everything or nothing is stress, it is impossible to make a proper diagnosis of any given condition. Everything might Stress usually includes those things which make you feel bad and leaves out those things which make you happy. she blends in with her surroundings until the danger goes away. Only as a last resort will the deer bound away, although she is always prepared to do so. But when she runs, she might get shot, so her best chance is to stand around trembling with tension. She doesn't die from the tension; she dies if the hunter shoots her. When confronted with a new or emergency situation, farm cows will just stand around rolling their eyes in terror and rarely do anything either quick or constructive. Cows will stampede when bitten by masses of mosquitoes or blackflies but then they just run in any direction and in a complete panic, without any sense about it. It is very difficult to make pigs either fight or run. They will snort around a lot with hardly any provocation. Chickens squawk and run about a lot, with or without stress. Stress - everything and nothing Furthermore, there are few ways in which animals resemble people and theories about people arising from the study of animals have no value whatsoever. No one would every consider treating disease in cattle on the basis of studies done on people. Another problem with the stress theory is that the definition of stress varies according to what it is being used to explain. It may or may not include anger, tension, hate, love, irritation, joy, pleasure, work, idleness, insecurity, pain, marriage, divorce, loss and many more. Stress could, in fact, be defined as being alive. Everything that composes human life, every facet of human emotion, can be defined as stressful according to the theory. The theory could even be restated as "Life is hard" or "In sorrow shall thou bring forth children". be -caused by the pain of living; every- . thing might be caused by the joy of living, or nothing may be caused by any of it. One is reminded of Freud's death wish or the existentialists' cosmic despair — we are born, therefore, we must die. A large body of male theorists deny that anything good can happen betweeen those two events. Medical science has always been very learned about the cause and cure of illness. Originally, illness was all caused by bad humours, bad air or an imbalance of certain elements. The cures were various, including a lot of bleeding and leeches. Medical science, after many thousands of years, acknowledged that some illnesses have discernable and curable causes. However, as the ability of any individual medical scientist to discern these causes is almost nil, in practice hardly any disease is found to have its own cause. A blanket diagnosis to cover everything is necessary if doctors are to continue to be rich. For a while, every disease without a cause immediately discernable by the medical scientist at hand was thought to be due to sexual repression. Sexual repression, like bad humours and imbalanced elements, is all-encompassing and explains everything . There was also the matter of sin, which everyone knew caused disease, but doctors weren't too pleased to share their practice with priests so they de-emphasized - sin as a cause for disease. Mental illness was at first just ignored. In the 1800's when lunatic asylums in Western Europe became big business, masturbation was said to be the main cause of mental illness. This gradually diminished in favour of bad motherhood; now mental and physical illness are considered to have common causes, i.e. bad mothers and stress. The main problem is, of course, lack of treatment. Where do you go to get treatment for anything these days without the implication that it's all In your head because you can't cope properly? How can you have any self-respect, how can you demand treatment, when you know you are causing yourself to have cancer? The obvious treatment for stress-induced illness would be to eliminate the stress. But since it is all-pervasive, only cadavers can be free of it and that hardly seems like a cure. The best we can hope for is to learn to "deal with" stress in a variety of ways including meditation, love, religion, tranquilizers, etc. If stress is pain, then the problem with stress is that it is painful. And if the pain isn't due to stress, treatment for stress will not affect the pain. If a person has a bad back, for example, she cannot go for treatment of her back; her whole life is cast into question. She cannot be cured for it is obvious that she lacks something essential in her character, otherwise she would not have succumbed to stress. The only reason the stress theory has stayed around at all is because it has become intertwined with the world view of the ME syndrome. According to a whole spate of books and magazines, looking after number one is the only respectable occupation. The most important aspect of this outlook is that it supposes it really is possible to isolate an individual from her surroundings. Stroking oneself properly makes the world go away, we are told. Well, if one can control the environment, one can control the "stress" in one's surroundings. If you don't do this, then you have caused your own illness by perversely refusing to deal with your habits. Nowadays the first thing asked of a sick person is what she did wrong. It adds an enormous burden of guilt and embarrassment to one who is already sick. What is the purpose of life? The most obvious problem with the concept of illness-as-sin is the time and money involved in the care and feeding of oneself. It is a lifetime project and if you spend your life just making sure you don't sicken and die, then what is the purpose of life? And what about those who don't have the time and money required? It seems like the poor and the drunks and the mothers are always with us; the rest of us just have to make the time and money to look after our bodies and minds properly. It also gives us someone to feel superior to. However, an even more overwhelming problem is becoming obvious even in the short time the ME generation has been running for its life. That is — no matter how careful, no matter how dietary, how strenuous, how yogic, how meditative, how diodynamic - people get sick anyway. Some even die. So you either learn yoga and/or take tranquilizers and try to ignore your illness and raise your consciousness sufficiently to ignore death. Or you make the futile rounds of arrogant, overpriced and ignorant doctors prattling about stress, searching for a diagnosis which will result in a cure. And hope to stay relatively healthy and alive until some more effective theory of disease is invented. May 1982 Kinesis 17 MOVEMENT MATTERS SORWUC seeks substitute daycare workers Like working with preschool aged children? Have knowledge or experience in day care centres? Interested in regular part-time work? Daycare centres all over Vancouver need you. When a daycare worker is off sick, is on leave, or wants to take holiday time, a big problem is finding someone to replace her. Some but not all centres request that their substitutes be qualified and licensed. All want workers who are genuinely interested in 3-5 year olds and can plan programs for that age group. Pay scales range from $5.00 to $7.00 per hour depending on the centre. Interested? The SORWUC union office is compiling a list of substitutes for its day care centres. If you want to be on that list, call 684-2834 during the day and leave your name. Final call for literary submissions to Festival '82 FESTIVAL '82: A Celebration of Women in the Arts will take place in Vancouver, July 5-15, 1982, at Robson Square Media Centre. Literary events will include an evening of readings by six well-known B.C. writers, a paneldiscussion of issues currently faced by women writers in Canada, a workshop in children's literature, a stage production, a three hour open reading, and an evening of poetry and music featuring eight more writers. Women invited to read at this last event will be selected from those submitting manuscripts to the literature committee. Please send poetry manuscripts to Helene Rosenthal, Literature Committee Co-ordi- nator, 2142 Mathers, West Vancouver, B.C. V7V 2H3, no later than May 15, 1982. While this time limits the number of readers, we will be displaying all submitted manuscripts at the festival so as to represent as many B.C. women writers as possible. May 10-15 named Daycare Week in B.C. The B.C. Daycare Action Coalition has named May 10-15 Daycare Week in B.C. In Vancouver, the Coalition will be offering various educational programs aimed at increasing public awareness of what is (and is not) available in daycare facilities. Vancouver's program for Daycare Week is as follows (all events will be held at the YWCA, 580 Burrard unless otherwise indicated: Monday, May 10 - Official opening, Granny Y's Daycare, 1020 Nelson. - "Is daycare good for children?", by Eleanor Aimes, SFU child psychologist, 12-1 p.m. Tuesday, May 11 - "How to find good day care," by Gyda Chud, VCC Early Childhood Education Coordinator, 12-1 p.m. - Films and discussion, 7-10 p.m. Wednesday, May 12 - "What to do when there's nothing to do", by Daniel Wood, author of "Kids, Kids, Kids", 1 p.m. - Speaker on the problems of daycare, 8 p.m. Thursday, May 13 - James Barber's "Peanut Butter Pie: what's cooking in daycare?", workshop for 5-year-olds and parents, 10 a.m. - "Daycare in Scandinavia: how does Canada compare?", by Kathleen Smith, 12-1 p.m. Friday, May 14 - Lecture, 12-1 p.m. Saturday, May 15 - Rally in Riley Park, with picnic on the grass, songs and speeches, and a New Games Festival. Bring your own lunch. 11-2 p.m. For more information, contact Kathy May at 327-8264. CRIAW calls for papers on Sexism in Research In anticipation of its annual conference, to be held November 19-22 in Ottawa, the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women is calling for papers on the theme: Sexism in Research and its Policy Implications. This year's conference theme is based on the premise that sexist research ought to be the concern of all citizens and decision makers because it so distorts the base on which policy decisions are made, that they are incomplete at best and counterproductive at worst. CRIAW is calling for abstracts or proposals (approximately 250 words) outlining potential research papers, panels or round tables from researchers, policy-makers, scientists, lawyers and people whose work in the grass roots application of policy reveals our theme. All abstracts/proposals should be submitted by April 15, 1982 to: Jill Vickers, Conference Convenor, C/0 CRIAW, P.O. Box 236, Station B, Ottawa, Ontario. KIP 6C4 IWD organizers propose year- round committee by Esther Shannon Since 1974, Vancouver feminists have worked hard to re-establish International Women's Day as an important political tradition. As women who have worked on organizing IWD for the past two years, we feel it is important to strengthen our commitment to this event by developing a year-round committee in place of the current ad hoc group. This year's committee has decided to issue a call to all interested women to meet and discuss the establishment of an on-going committee. There are many reasons for Vancouver feminists to consider such a step. Due to the short-term nature of IWD organizing, many important factors are overlooked or receive inadequate attention. There is little time for creative action or a dedicated outreach program that would broaden IWD's appeal or its base of supporters. Invariably, events such as a march, rally, information day and dance are selected which attract the same largely politicized constitutency. Over the past two years, representation on the IWD committee from established or newer feminist groups has been minimal. Not only does this leave the IWD committee without a solid base to report to, but it limits the committee's access to contributions from women working day-to-day on important women's issues. For the women who serve on the committee, its ad hoc nature creates unnecessary strain. Following a two or three month stretch of high pressure and constant deadlines, few women feel like returning the next year with their hard-earned skills and resources. Women newly attracted to working on the committee very often get lost in the intense focus on the work at hand, and don't return to further meetings. In the long term, such a situation suggests that IWD may become less and less a vehicle to present and promote the needs and demands women are making. In addition, the lack of a solid base makes IWD more vulnerable to take-over bids from groups whose dedication to women's interests are, to say the least, suspect. With strong representation from feminist groups on the committee, networking would reach many women's organizations not part of the women's movement, providing them with an entry point and a means to maintain links with the movement. Increased outreach to trade unions and their eventual participation on the committee is another strong possibility. Clearly, IWD provides a good way for feminists to develop coalitions with other organizations active in the struggle for women's rights. This could be achieved through sponsoring and endorsing IWD events in the community at large. A year-round committee would also allow for such tasks as the translation of IWD material to reach Vancouver's large immigrant and ethnic communities, as well as to ensure better distribution of information. IWD is an exciting vehicle that is, in its present form, underutilized. We invite and urge all interested women to attend an initial meeting to assess the idea of an on-going IWD committee. The meeting will be held Tuesday, May 25 at 7:30 pm in Room L5 at Britannia Community Centre, Commercial and Napier, Vancouver. Co-op Radio marathon features women's music From Monday May 10 through Friday May 14, the Women's Programming Caucus of Co-op Radio will be presenting five two-hour women's music specials. Don't miss them! Monday, May 10 Noon to 1 p.m. - As an introduction to a week of women's music you will hear an hour of classical music written and performed by women. 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. - The second hour we'll be focussing on more women jazz instrumentalists. Tuesday, May 11 Noon to 1 p.m. - Is there a Canadian women1! music? Tune in and listen to your favourites from coast to coast. 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. - The contribution of Black American women to mainstream American music has been underrated. Tune in for the real story behind Motown, Stax, and the Philly Sound. Wednesday, May 12 Noon to 2 p.m. - Country music has always had a message. We'll explore, in a 2- hour special program, the message from women in country and western, bluegrass and folk music. Thursday, May 13 tNoon to 2 p.m. - From the earliest roots of the African continent, we'll follow Black women's music from South Africa, highlife, gospel, soul, blues, reggae, ska and salsa. Friday, May 14 Noon to 2 p.m. - Two hours of the best of women in post punk and new wave music from San Francisco to London to Vancouver . 18 Kinesis May 1982 LETTERS Vancouver feminists withdraw support from Rape Relief TO: The Vancouver Women's Liberation Movement RE: Vancouver Rape Relief The policies and practices of Vancouver Rape Relief have been the subject of controversy among Vancouver feminists for the last three years. We have tried to resolve these controversies. Our experience has proved that dialogue with Vancouver Rape Relief is NOT productive. We, the undersigned, withdraw our support from Vancouver Rape Relief because we believe that they are no longer supportive of women. FROM OUR EXPERIENCE WE KNOW THAT VANCOUVER RAPE RELIEF: * is hierarchical; * has an entrenched elitest leadership; * is effectively closed to other feminists; * misuses therapeutic and political tools, e.g. constructive criticism; * mystifies and does not share information and skills, either internally or externally, thus creating a dependence on the 'leadership'; * does not provide a quality service to women who have been raped by refusing to support a woman's chosen action unless deemed 'politically correct' by Vancouver Rape Relief; * does not do either advocacy work or follow-up counselling, thus, in effect, limiting women's choices to a very narrow range; * exploits women's vulnerability at the time of contact with the crisis line to recruit them without that intent clearly explained to women; * has replaced training sessions with a method of indoctrinating women through the use of so-called 'radical therapy'; .* denies a woman the right to develop from her own experience an individual consciousness of her own oppression; * tells women that they bear some responsibility for their own victimization; * is anti-lesbian. They believe lesbianism to be a 'fear of men' rather than a positive choice to love women; * has some members who do not support a woman's right to choose abortion; * has some members who do not support a woman's right to fight back against violent men; * protects rapists by not giving information to women who ask about their legal options; * puts the interests of rapists ahead of a woman's right to decide whether or not to use the legal system. Exploits and adds to women's self-blame by portraying the rapist as a victim of society; * holds women responsible for reforming men; * protects the violent men in Men Against Rape by not believing women who have told about violence committed against them by men in Men Against Rape; * gives information which is supposed to be confidential to Men Against Rape; * has isolated itself from the women's movement and has lost its credibility with community organizations and institutions; * refuses to refer women to anyone outside of Vancouver Rape Relief; * does not hold itself accountable to anyone. This includes women in their own Support, Education and Action groups; * believes itself to be the revolutionary vanguard (i.e. they believe they are leading the women's movement); * has jeopardized the funding of the anti- rape movement in B.C. Vancouver Rape Relief has been saying since September of 1980 that they would go off govern ment funding by April 1982. After having agreed to a contract with the government for funding, Vancouver Rape Relief made strategic decisions not to provide statistics as required under the contract, which endangered the funding of the Coalition of B.C. Rape Centres. A smokescreen was raised to the public; that smokescreen was 'confidentiality'. We refuse to choose between the government, the police and other institutions, and Vancouver Rape Relief. We see another option and therefore some of us are organizing a Women Against Violence Against Women/Rape Crisis Group. 3) For more information attend our women-only in-movement meeting May 18, 1982 from 7:00 to 10:30 p.m. at First United Church, Gore and Hastings Streets. We regret that we have only limited childcare facilities in the church for 10 children. We will be making NO statement to press, other than Kinesis. THE WAVAW/RAPE CRISIS GROUP: Megan Ellis ex-VRR 76-79 Deborah Bradley RR/SEA 80 Joa Lazarus RR/SEA & House Funding 80-81 Christine McDowell ex-VRR 79 and 80 Ann Bemrose ex-VRR 77-81 Geraldine Glattstein ex-VRR 73-77 Frances Wasserlein ex-VRR summer 78 Stephanie Crate ex-VRR 76-80 Ellen Frank ex-VRR 77-81 Leslie Timmins ex-VRR 77-79, 80 Johanna Clark ex-VRR 73-74, 79-80 Lyn MacDonald ex-VRR 79-80 Hope McEwen RR/SEA 80 R. Elaine Young ex-VRR 78 Mary Woo Sims ex-VRR 77-79 Ellen Baragon ex-VRR 77-79 Betsy Spaulding ex-VRR 77-78, NAR 79 Ann Daskal ex-VRR 76-78 Kathryn Ford RR/SEA 81 We support this statement and the WAVAW/ RCG: Penny Goldsmith B. Gene Errington Jillian Ridington Marilyn Hogan (ex-RR/SEA August 80) Venge Dixon Coral Arrand Kern Windwraith Lauri Rutland Nadine Allen Gayla Reid Yvonne Johnson Gisele Perreault Lori Ross Patrice Snopkowski Merilyn Berge Rachel Yoder Antoinette Zanda (ex-Ottawa RCC 75- Gail Koob Paddy Kennedy (ex-VRR 79-80) Val Innes (ex-Winnipeg & Ottawa RCC 76-79) Mary Wallace Margot Johnston Sally Brisebois Adonna Rudolph Lyn Lilly (ex-VRR 80) Evelyn Beheshti (ex-RR/SEA 80) Jan Barnsley M. Jean Mcintosh Debra Lewis Esther Shannon Diana Ellis Pat Feindel Andree Buchanan Susan White Leah Dunphy Connie Smith Diane Cumming Marianne vanLoon Lynn Whelain We support the WAVAW/RCG: Tanya Hockley Anne-Louise McManus Annie Simmonds Lou Nelson Paddy Moore Sherry Mills Silva Tenenbein Sherry McCarnan Judy Ritter Claire Olivier Susan McCaan Carol Ryall Cathy Hluchy Susan Foster Nancy Jackson Donna Clay Lynn Potter Gardia Koolwine We support the WAVAW/RCG if they don't go for government funding right how: Dorrie Brannock Janet Sawyer Paulette Roscoe Morgan McGuigan We seek another option and therefore some of us are organizing a Women Against Violence Against Women Rape Crisis Group. Based on our individual and shared experience as women, our aim is to create a feminist rape crisis centre which will: * strive towards collectivity; * be part of an autonomous women's liberation movement; * fight violence against women on many fronts, in many ways; * be pro-choice on abortion; * support a woman's right to self-defense; * support a woman's sexual choice; * provide a service based upon the belief that men are solely responsible for the violence they commit against women; * be organized non-hierarchically; * find ways to learn from each other which are empowering to all; * find ways to resolve individual differences among ourselves with respect for all women in the group; * work together with other women's groups; * find ways to be accountable to the women's liberation movement; * be open to feminists and women interested in rape crisis work * hold training sessions for women interested in doing rape crisis work, sharing skills and information; * provide a service, including legal and medical advocacy, crisis counselling respectful of the woman's choice. Signed: WAVAW/RCG May 1982 Kinesis 19 LETTERS Women's centres need adequate core funding now Kinesis: Through the lobbying efforts of many individuals and groups, the Secretary of State Department tripled the Women's Programme budget in the 1981-82 fiscal year. This allowed many Women's Centres across Canada to be core funded. In the coming fiscal year, we understand that the Secretary of State plans to "hold the line" on the Women's Programme budget of $3 million to be dispersed throughout Canada. Women's Centres received funding for only part of the last fiscal year, and therefore will be requesting additional monies to cover twelve months of operating in the coming fiscal year. The Women's Programme budget, as it now stands, will not be able to accommodate this increase. This will necessitate funding level cuts to many Centres. We do not find this acceptable. In this time of an economic downturn, resource industry towns are especially hard hit. The social cost of lay offs and rising unemployment is astronomical. Women's Centres have a vital role in easing the burden on women in our communities. We do not accept that Women's Centres should perform fundraising activities to meet a major portion of their operating costs. Major fundraising is a significantly draining use of our volunteer energies and detracts from the legitimate activities of an active Women's Centre. Would the Department of National Defence hold a bake sale to purchase another tank? The Secretary of State Department has a mandate to promote the status of women. Women's Centres accomplish this. Through the use of dedicated volunteers and paid core staff, we can provide services with a very favourable cost-benefit ratio. Women's Centres are crucial! We want to be funded in the same manner as Native Friendship Centres, which currently receive in excess of four times the budget for the women's programme. After all, we ARE 51$ of the population and are a sorely neglected and disadvantaged sector - especially in isolated "male-dominated" resource areas of Canada. All levels of government as well as the private sector have discriminated against women in their policies and practices. It is time to take some significant corrective measures. We are requesting a tripling of the Women's Programme budget of the Secretary of State (from $3 to $9 million). We are asking for your support for that goal. Please contact the Hon. Gerald Reagan, Secretary of State, c/o House of Commons, Ottawa, to voice your views. Yours sincerely, Pat Cathers, Chairperson Terrace Women's Resource Centre Bisexuality a valid choice too Kinesis: For lack of a better term (and I've tried a few—including such outrageous handles as 'omnisexual' and 'anarchasexual' — interesting but horrid because they don't really say anything, or else they say too much), I am 'bisexual'. Yep. Bisexual. It would be__truer, in fact, to say I am 'sexual', because my feelings are simply there, and are excited at times by certain sounds, odours, sensations, moods...far more than the particular gender of a given individual. You may ask why I announce this. No one asked. Well, it's because of certain theories, certain remarks I hear that stack up in my memory to culminate in one damn hunk of irritation. I am weary of being told that bisexuality is a cop-out. I believe I understand the thinking behind it; that bisexual women and men have at times the habit of standing timidly behind their hetero side, leaving the oppressed half (and hence, its brothers and sisters) to fend for itself in the harsh right of day. I agree that we must be vocal and strong in our defense of. our right to love women, or men, whatever our physical sex. However, this timidity is the behaviour to be indicted, not the bisexuality that provides the cover. Goddamn it, I am bisexual. And although I refer to myself as a dyke in a crunch (i.e. when anti-gay remarks are being passed), I am no more a lesbian than I am a heterosexual. Believe me, I have tried denying first one aspect of my sexuality, and then the other. It doesn't work, isn't natural, and damn well isn't fair. Why is it feminist to free your lesbian self, and anti- lesbian to defend your male-loving side? Enough said. I think the shifty behaviours are what should be attacked, not the sexuality. Rather than invite further division in the women's movement, I still believe we should defend everyone's right to choose - and not just to choose what is politically 'correct' or preordained. I am appalled that I am shit on by my sisters for what is to me very clearly my right, and the self-same fight as the lesbian's. In the spirit of tolerance and self-respect, Bran Way Women's Building Society dissolves Kinesis: When we convened the special meeting of the Women's Building Society called for February 18, it was apparent that sufficient interest to continue our efforts was not forthcoming; we barely mustered a quorum as set forth in our constitution. A motion to dissolve the Women's Building Society was passed and the following decisions were made on the disposition of the Society's assets: To set up a special trust fund in the amount of $1>000 to be held for 3 years from this date as seed money for a group that might emerge during this period with the same or similar goals, i.e., establishing a Women's Building in this area. As well, that the 995 BCRIC shares donated continue to be held in trust at CCEC Credit Union for the same period of time, with the Vancouver Women in Focus Society to act as trustees/executors of these trusts. In the event that no group emerges in the stated period, these assets would go to the trustees/executors cited above. The Women's Building Society is withholding only the amount necessary to get a final mailing out and file the necessary provincial and federal reports. $500 is to go to the Vancouver Women's Bookstore to assist in covering some heavier than usual expenses. The balance of $4,150 goes to Women in Focus and is specifically earmarked for their Art Gallery, to enable them to continue this valuable cultural resource. The Gallery has been such a wonderful contribution both to women artists exhibiting there and to the women's community. We thank all of you who so generously contributed your BCRIC shares and/or financial donations. We regret that the dream did not become a reality at this time. Hopefully, it will surface again— and at least we have provided a start towards it. Sincerely, and in sisterhood, Women's Building Society of Vancouver Taking issue with S/M Kinesis: I would like to voice my disappointment and opposition to an advertisement printed in the February edition of Kinesis. This advertisement was for lesbians who were interested in S/M and wouldn't mind being photographed. My first impulse, upon reading this ad, was to feel uneasy and then to disbelieve that S/M really meant sado-masochism. After I'd determined that indeed the S/M meaning was the given and accepted one, I tried to forget about the advertisement. I tried to rationalize - well,'we all need money. Wow, we don't need money that badly! Kinesis is a feminist newspaper, is it not? As feminists we are fighting against the violence and opression women face daily. We have gone beyond the whole freedom of speech garbage, realizing that men should not be free to circulate pornography which validates sado-masochism (among other things). Would the women of Kinesis have accepted such an advertisement from a man? Would you accept such an ad from Hustler magazine? For those of us who have seen Not a Love Story, we know that women photographers are equally as sucked into the pornography industry as men. What was in the minds of the women who accepted this ad? Sado-masochism is not an expression of love. It is an expression of power imbalance, oppression and societal sickness. We must not condone this even when the participants are women. I sincerely believe that I am not taking an unduly hard line on this issue. I request that Kinesis no longer accept advertisements from women that they would not tolerate from men. I suspect that this ad would have fallen into that category. I further request that Kinesis publish a retraction at least the same size as the original advertisement. As for the woman, GIVE HER HER MONEY BACK. I'd be glad to replace the amount if Kinesis is in that bad a financial situation. In sisterhood R. Elaine Young Editorial comment - We agree this is an issue requiring a policy decision, but as yet we don't have the consensus to make one. Until such time as we do, we're not prepared to retract this classified ad. To clarify the issue of money, no, we don't need the money that badly. We do not charge for Bulletin Board items; in this case, the woman submitting the ad sent along a $3 donation. We accepted it, just as we do other donations. We would very much like to see discussion in Kinesis on the issue of sado-masochism, as it seems to us an issue which is unresolved within the feminist community as well. 20 Kinesis May 1982 BULLETIN BOARD JUST OUT The following publications are available from the Women's Research Centre, #301- 2515 Burrard Street, Vancouver V6J 3J6. The price covers cost of duplicating and postage only. Subscriptions to the Centre are available at $10/yr. Subscribers receive copies of new publications. A Brief on Wife Assault and Protection for Battered Women, Feb/82. Available soon. A Study of Protection for Battered Women, 2J1 pp., 1982, $8.00 (institutions $10.00). Presentation to the International Conference on the Human Side of Energy, 1981. Available soon. A Perspective on Intervention in Cases of Wife Assault - A Discussion Paper. Available soon. A Review of Munro House - Second Stage Housing for Battered Women, 11 pp., 1980, $2.00. Battered and Blamed - a Report on Wife Assault from the Perspective, of Battered Women, Women's Research Centre and Vancouver Transition House, 131 PP-> 1980, $5.00. WORKING WOMEN, A Handbook of Resources, Rights and Remedies, Winter 1981 issue of Southern Exposure. An organizing manual with a particular focus on working women in the southern U.S. Available for $4 from Southern Exposure, P0 Box 531, Durham, N.C. 27702, U.S.A. LA REVUE, a quarterly magazine produced by the same collective which produced the video "Amazones d'Hier, Lesbiennes d'Aujourd'hui". It's billed as "a magazine of exchange, information and pol-' itical reflection with an emphasis on radical lesbianism". Subs are $10/year in Canada. Write: Louise Turcotte, C.P. 1721, Succ. La Cite, Montreal, P.Q. H2W 2R7. CHANGING TIMES, Women & Employment in British Columbia, a report by Victoria Status of Women Action Group. 130 pp. Published January 1982. Copy available at Vancouver Status of Women office. 0UTWRITE is a new women's newspaper by and for Black and White women in the United Kingdom. It's published ten times a year, and subs are £6.50/yr. for individuals, £13.00/yr. for organizations. Make International Money Orders payable to Feminist Newspaper Group, and mail to Outwrite, Oxford House, Derbyshire St., London E2, England. GROUPS INNER SOURCES OF HEALING AND CREATIVITY is an on-going group practising meditation, visualization and energy circles. Allow yourself the gift of good feelings, beautiful thoughts and positive changes. Guided by Cyndia Cole, Tuesdays 7:30 - 9:30 p.m. You may attend on a drop-in basis. Fee is whatever you wish to contribute. Call 251-2534 for location. BISEXUAL WOMEN'S GROUP celebrates its 1st anniversary with a potluck dinner and night out at the pub Wednesday, May 12. Newcomers are always welcome. For details phone Georgia at 224-5614. NORTHERN LESBIANS is a group newly formed in Terrace. We invite you to write to us for information on events and meetings: Northern Lesbians, R.R. #2 Box 50, Usk Store, Terrace, B.C. V8G 3Z9. CLASSIFIED GARDEN CLEANUP, maintenance and design. Reasonable rates. Call 434-0522. Do you have the need to relay a message to the world but can't afford the billboard space? VANCOUVER CO-OPERATIVE RADIO is offering airtime to community groups who would like to present their ideas, information and concerns over the air. Many community groups have already formed ties with Co-op Radio but there are many more we haven't reached, and we would welcome any suggestions either for fall or summer programming. If you and your group would like to get involved,- please contact Ellen Baragon at 684-8494 or 536-5348. EVENTS "THE DINNER PARTY", in Montreal until May 7, has been booked by the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The exhibit there will run from May 21 to July 4. CO-OP RADIO holds its annual fundraising marathon May 9-16. See Movement Matters page for more details on special women's programming. MARCH & RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ABORTION RIGHTS Saturday, May 8 starting at noon. March begins at Q.E. Theatre plaza; rally at Hotel Vancouver at 1 p.m. Childcare available. Call Concerned Citizens for Choice on Abortion for registration - 876-9920. FIRST ANNUAL Vancouver Film Festival at the Ridge Theatre from May 13 to May 30. Included are Not a Love Story and P4h'(Prisons for Women). Programs available at regular outlets for Ridge Theatre events. NATIONAL WOMEN'S NETWORK CONFERENCE will be held in Vancouver June 3-5. It will include sessions on starting and maintaining networks, programming, newsletters and more. Fee $100. Register by writing: Centre for Continuing Education, 5997 Iona Dr., Vancouver, V6A 2M, or call 228-2181, local 240. LESBIAN & GAY FILM FESTIVAL will be held at Montreal's Cinematheque Quebecoise from June 15-20. The event will include Canadian premieres of 10 recent lesbian and gay features and much more. Deadline for submission is May 10. For mpre info and programs, call (514) 873-8671/ 845-2512, or write La comite culturel, A.D.G.Q., C.P. 36, Succ. C, Montreal PQ, H2L 4J7. CELEBRATE SUMMER SOLSTICE on Vancouver Island. Women's dance Saturday, June 19, 8 p.m. at Errington Hall. Picnic and softball Sunday, June 20, time and location to be announced in next Kinesis. Camping at nearby Englishman River Falls. To get to Errington, go to Parksville, take the Port Alberni Hwy turnoff, follow signs to Englishman River Falls. The Errington Hall is 14 miles off the highway on the way to the Falls, on the left after the General Store. For further info, call Mary or Sylvie 248-9380. 3rd ANNUAL WEST COAST WOMEN'S MUSIC FESTIVAL will be held this year from September 23-26. Festival tickets are $80-100 sliding scale and are limited to 4000. A limited number of weekend passes are available. Food and childcare provided, boys under 10 welcome. The camp is accessible to disabled women. Input and suggestions welcome. For more info and tickets, contact WCWMF at 1195 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110 or call (415) 641-4892. / Cope by W*\iin^ lofe of ^<\jWou)r\S ON THE AIR W0MANVISI0N on Co-op Radio, 102.7 FM, from 7:00-8:00pm each Monday: May 3 - Reproductive rights. May 10 - A special look at women and money. Help us by answering our skill testing questions and sending in yours. May 17 - Women and reggae music. May 24 - Celebrate VICKY'S BIRTHDAY with Victorian chambermusic, melodrama, and morality- all from a feminist perspect- perspective. May 31 - Women and humour. THE LESBIAN SHOW. Our listeners' response to the show's request for feedback has been very encouraging. Listeners like the new format with its regular time slots for news and reviews, herstory, literature reading, a 15-minute feature and lesbian music. We are going to continue producing the show in this manner-. For all of you who didn't get a chance to give us your feedback, please feel free to call us shortly after 8:30 on Thursday nights. Or if you have some news relevant to the lesbian community please call us between 6:15 and 7:00 p.m. on Thursdays at 684-8494. May 6 - Lesbian mothers and mothers of lesbians. May 13 - The Marathon. The Lesbian Show on Co-op Radio is one of three radio shows we've heard about that address lesbians in the world. We urge listeners to call us May 13 and join the station or renew membership. Without the station, there is no Lesbian Show. We have all sorts of incentives (goodies) to give away to our listeners. May 20 & 27 - A two-part feature on international lesbians. If you are a lesbian from a different country and were a lesbian while living in that country, we would like to interview you. Call us May 6 between 6:15 and 7:00 p.m. at 684-8494, or call at other times and leave a message. RUBYMUSIC on Co-op Radio, 102.7 FM, from 7:00-7:30pm each Friday: May 7 - Special selections from the women's recording industry. May 14 - Marathon Motown special. For the marathon, Rubymusic expands to an hour with a special tribute to Motown women. The day also marks one year of Rubymusic programming! Here's an excellent way to get involved! Vancouver Status of Women is calling for nominations to its executive. In order to run for the executive, you must have been a member of VSW in good standing for at least six months. If you're interested, send your name and phone number by May 31 to Vancouver Status of Women, 400A West 5th Avenue, Vancouver (Attn: Nominations Committe).
Preceding title: Vancouver Status of Women. Newsletter. Date of publication: 1974-2001. Frequency: Monthly.
Periodicals
Newspapers
HQ1101.V24 N49
English
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Vancouver : Vancouver Status of Women
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Original Format: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. HQ1101.V24 N49
Women--Social and moral questions
Feminism--Periodicals
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