Letters to the PAR-L list PAR-L, is a feminist email list administered through University of New Brunswick. SWAG's president, Stephanie Lovatt, a grassroots "flaming" feminist has had many |
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Why Throw Water on a Drowned Rat? Rejected by PAR-L This letter was sent to join the list's discussion of a Mike Steyn article in the Jan. 9, 2006 issue of Macleans magazine and was not published as it was considered "flaming" Jan. 2006 Ha Ha ! This Mike Steyn bloke is having a meltdown. He is having horrible visions of women of all sorts, wanton and disgraceful, saying stuff and doing whatever they want. Oh! what will happen to him. Mommy might not be there to change his diaper. He could be looking at the prospect of having to define his masculinity without his boots firmly planted on a woman's neck. There is nothing more pathetic than the sight of a man, enraged that the free ride is coming to a close. I will say no more. Why throw water on a drowned rat! Stephanie Lovatt > Hi Stephanie, To PAR-L Aha! I saw this coming. Haven't I just finished mentioning that it
is not women who are afraid to write, it is those such as yourself
who are afraid of the emotions of others when witnessed in print. Is
this the part where women are afraid of the danger or retaliation?.
I'm not, so why should you be. This is the silencing of women in the
name of "safety". So far, all I have seen on this site, besides my
own letters of course, is an overabundance of the most boring,
prosaic and characterless communication which could best be described
as neo-feminist academentia. Is it little wonder that women are never
heard. Quit cowering behind your computer, there is a war on.
Steph Lovatt |
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Rejected by PAR-L Dec. 11 2005 I am writing from Victoria, home to some of the poorest women in the known world. In the month of December, we hear a great deal of palaver on how much the Canadian Government cares about women. Well 15 years after Montreal, things are even worse. The grand proclamation.... Whereas this and Whereas that was meaningless and the waste of a good tree. A guaranteed income for women is. Actually for everybody. Imagine that. No more prostitution. No more women living with batters to survive. No more social service poverty pimping social workers and agencies. We cant even organize because our women's centers have been closed. So here we are like sitting ducks with bad teeth and raggedy bras and our knickers held up with safety pins. We want our women's centre back. We want Legal aid. We want well woman clinics like women in Europe have. Dec. 11, 05, later, |
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Accepted by PAR-L Re: "THEME: The Canadian theme for International Women's Week 2006 is Beyond Laws: The Right to be Me, which addresses women's rights, women's diversity and the need to put words into action." Jan. 24, 2006 Awesome news that. An international women's day. The theme is The Right to be Me! How painfully original! This is a letter from your raggedy sisters in Victoria. We are of course relieved to hear that our poverty and scuttleing is up for consideration by those who know how to make posters and the like. I should warn you however in case you dont know already. If any steps are taken to improve the lives of women (in all their diversity of course) all those benefiting from slavery will come down off the wall in true Humpty Dumpty fashion. Maybe as an addendum to the festivities you could organise a workshop that would educate women on exactly how their unpaid and underpaid work is part of the gross national product.. if you pardon the choice of words. Gender Equality is hardly a palatable notion for women as we are not really enthralled by the male propensity for the destruction of the planet. What we want to see is plain and simple. A guaranteed livable income, maybe put that on one of your nice posters.
I hope our IWD has a little more spoken truth in it, broke and battered and all as we are!
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The time has passed for clinking tea cups Accepted by PAR-L Jan. 30, 06 Reply to Stephanie Lovatt from the National Council of Women of Canada Reply back to the National Council of Women of Canada from Stephanie Lovatt Madame, Stephanie Lovatt |
The "inciteful email" calling for support of a Guaranteed Livable Income Accepted by PAR-L I am addressing this letter to all the women who benefit in a monetary way from violence against women. This includes women who are living off grants to study violence against women. This includes women who draw a salary or who are reimbursed in any form as a result of violence against women. This includes movie makers, artists, social workers. case managers, bureaucrats, researchers,doctors, those in the psychiatric field, women who have adopted children apprehended by the state, shelter workers and so on. If you are indeed committed to ending violence against women, please put your money where your mouth is and support Guaranteed Livable Income. Solve the problem at the source. And don't worry, if you lose your job on account of there being no victims to be found, you will be guaranteed an income. Support G.L.I. and end slavery. Stephanie Lovatt
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Response #1 to "inciteful" from Cindy L'Hirondelle Accepted to PAR-L list Re: "intimidation, disrespect and arrogance to incite feminists" as describing Stephanie Lovatt's call for support of a Guaranteed Livable Income As [E] wrote, "Whoa" indeed. When people are this easily put off from trying to save the majority of the world's citizen's from death by artificial poverty, because the grassroots are ornery and don't talk 'proper' and especially if the grassroots speak urgently, forcefully and strongly (confused with "arrogance" and "disrespect" and even "intimidation") then I think there is a very real possibility they will never really be able to be allies anyhow because they will always be threatening to storm off if they get offended by a myriad of unpredictable violations of some unspecified standards. Women have a rightful reason to be full of fire. They are defending their lives and are fighting on behalf of all women in the world, the *vast* majority of whom are living with life and death insecurity for themselves and their families, in the midst of the most staggeringly wasteful economic practices that the world has ever known. And all because the economic experts, who speak so rationally, have said that a person's value is based on their "productivity" "The rewards of a market system are linked to productivity..." -- Karl E. Case, Wellesley College, Ray C. Fair, Yale University, "Principles of Economics", Prentice-Hall, 1996. And as Marilyn Waring has pointed out, it's a neat trick that the unpaid work that women do is *not* considered economically productive -- including popping out in their spare time the entire human species and all the workers and all the consumers that the oh so productive industrialists and all people with paid work rely on! I too have been told I'm too confrontational, too this too that too everything else. There is no shortage of people who try to get uppity women or the uppity of any oppressed group to shut up. We are continually told that we will "lose our allies." But are allies really people who continually threaten to walk away and take all their toys (because what they really mean is they have money and resources and you don't, so don't piss us off, even though they weren't sharing their resources with you in the first place, and they actually never intended to)? People will look for any reason abandon the fight because being in the trenches and then speaking out and putting a big target on your back is not a risk most women (or anyone) wants to take. Cindy L'Hirondelle, Coordinator, Women's Economic Justice Project |
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Response #3 to "inciteful" from Cindy L'Hirondelle Accepted to the PAR-L list as of March 20, 06 Part I The economic nut* to crack: Call to organize for Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI): It should be obvious which way political, economic and ecological winds are blowing. Keeping your head down and hoping you won't be affected has never herstorically been a good strategy. So what are we organizing to win? What are our proposed solutions? To be an "avid" (having a keen interest) supporter and active in the worldwide GLI movement**, here are 3 organizing questions you can answer***: 1) What do you see as the problem? This brings us back to cracking the economic nut* of how a minuscule number of elite have written economic rules to their benefit at the expense of the vast majority of people in the world, especially women -- who do the vast majority of the world's essential work while being economically, socially, physically and psychologically terrorized, harassed (Bill C-451) and punished as if they cause all the world's social, economic and environmental problems -- even though the entire economic system and all people with jobs are dependent on women having babies! Do you see this as the problem? Or do you think the problem is women don't have money because there are not enough good jobs? (the default solution****) But how would more good jobs give women (and everyone) Productive Choice? What if you want to care for your own loved ones? Is this not allowed? What if you want to care for community, for your health, for the health of the planet? The economic elite rulemakers say that none of this is important. Do we agree with this? If we don't, then how are we saying people can do these "unproductive" things? Or if we decide to solve poverty through forced production and subsequently forced consumption, how will this impact the environment? How will it impact our time especially time to organize against oppression and exploitation? Or do you see the problem as an inadequate welfare system? But what dignity is there in having to beg for public or private charity since it is not guaranteed and it is not livable and may never be since it is premised on being a "temporary" income supplement while you wait for that good paying productive job? Or if you advocate fixing welfare so it will be in effect a GLI, then why not just advocate a GLI? 2) What do you want to see happen? As in question 1, do you want a GLI? More 'good' jobs? Fixing welfare? Helping women to get good jobs? Do you have evidence that this is a viable or desirable solution? Is your solution a universal solution? Does your solution create Productive Choice -- the ability to say "no" to work that is exploitive or harmful to self or others or the environment and "yes" to work that allows for care of self, loved ones, community and environment? Does it allow for redefining productive work? “…only that work will be called productive that really produces, maintains and enhances life…Life will no longer be only a side-effect of extended accumulation; instead it will be the main goal of work.” Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, the Subsistence Perspective 1999 (p.58). Or do you advocate banning technology because it takes away jobs from humans? If so then why not ban all tools? No more backhoes, no more shovels! Make people do every thing with their bare hands since that will create more jobs? (I assume no one on this list advocates apocalyptic solutions: letting the human species die cause we are all just too stupid to live, since they'd have to start with themselves to set a good example; or advocating social darwinism --letting the 'losers' die-- since this means eliminating most of the world's population and then they'd have to clean their own toilet) 3) What are you willing to do? (Other than telling other people what they are doing wrong) Some ideas: These are just a few ideas, I look forward to hearing others. Make sure you email back your 1) analysis, 2) goals, 3) actions, to the PAR-L list so we can all get inspired. * "economic nut" reference to email (March 4) to PAR-L "the mainstream economic paradigm as the crucial nut (an intentional testicular metaphor) to crack]. ** Worldwide GLI/BI movement. See the Links page of http://www.livableincome.org/ or order a GLI Reader from "swag@pacificcoast.net" *** 3 organizing questions from Ann Livingston of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), adapted from popular education methods **** The default solution is the most likely solution that you advocate when you do not specify another solution such as GLI. Part II The recent spate of PAR-L posts on guaranteed livable income (March 1-5,06) shows there are a lot of management activists who emailed not say what they are doing on the issue of GLI, but instead give instructions on what other people are doing wrong. (Lee Lakeman excluded since she has written and organized on GLI for some time.) It is interesting that numerous 'just the facts ma'am" emails and articles about guaranteed income have flown over the heads or under the radar of the 1500 women and men on the PAR-L list. Yet Stephanie Lovatt's 141 word email caused a virtual storm of controversy. She was called: arrogant, disrespectful and intimidating, insulting, misdirected, too narrow in her criticism, that her actions contradict her goals, that she is not ambitious enough, bitterly sarcastic, accusatory, divisive, (all on PAR-L posts) and "simplistic, judgmental, arrogant and Disrespectful" from one email sent to SWAG. There were also positive comments including (from PAR-L): And locally in Victoria, there were plenty of positive comments and a lot of puzzlement that anyone would take offense with what she wrote. In fact, the "inciteful" 141 word email was the basis for SWAG's International Women's Day statement which was also inspired by the recent Venezuelan Women's Statement. One of the revealing charges against Stephanie Lovatt's email is that it was "arrogant". Yet, if someone with more power, say, Stephen Lewis, had spoken with conviction on how to save millions of people's lives around the world, would he have been called "arrogant"? The "inciteful" email, posted on PAR-L, Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:16:48, "I am addressing this letter to all the women who benefit in a monetary way from violence against women. This includes women who are living off grants to study violence against women. This includes women who draw a salary or who are reimbursed in any form as a result of violence against women. This includes movie makers, artists, social workers. case managers, bureaucrats, researchers,doctors, those in the psychiatric field, women who have adopted children apprehended by the state, shelter workers and so on. If you are indeed committed to ending violence against women, please put your money where your mouth is and support Guaranteed Livable Income. Solve the problem at the source. And don't worry, if you lose your job on account of there being no victims to be found, you will be guaranteed an income. Support G.L.I. and end slavery." Stephanie Lovatt [President of Victoria Status of Women Action Group] *** |
Rejected by PAR-L Dear PAR-L moderator (March 27, 06) Is'nt this typical ! And you at PARL are just falling in line out of fear. I respond strongly to John [-] because his aim is to control women in whatever way he can find.. His tactics are the same as the backlash tactics of mysoginists everywhere. Even men that are batterers are using this line of defense. Why? Because they have learned how to simper the simper. Boo Hoo! We are being excluded. Our rights are being infringed on. His rights to do what? Be accepted as an authority over what women say? It's enough to make you gag. Do not try to slow down the work at hand. This is about women's lives not men's egos. Women are fighting this battle on every front and you are giving quarter to men who cant see past their big... egos.. In case you havent noticed. Women are demanding, not requesting, and if John Ferguson or anyone else can't handle that, maybe they need to go to Africa to count female corpses. I am disgusted by the lack of courage and support, and the giving credit to patriarchal control tactics as if it were actual valid communication.. Steph Lovatt To PAR-L March 27th (rejected) Steph Lovatt |