Sex workers have for too long been seen as something less than fully human, our work seen as unskilled, as a “high-risk lifestyle” rather than a job. Our fight for decriminalization is but one aspect of the sex workers’ rights movement. The other, more complex component is our fight against stigma and the silence that we are encouraged to maintain around our work.

Morgentaler’s death gave the media the chance to love to hate anyone who colours or steps outside the lines. And Morgentaler certainly did that.

Over its 50 years, Canadian Dimension featured some of Canada’s most well-known and thought provoking feminists, activists and scholars, the majority of whom straddled the line between academia and activism. This was fitting for a magazine that has made such a dedicated effort to mobilize knowledge in ways that activists can use in their struggles.

One womyn is too young, the other is too old: Is age really the factor in the NDP leadership race?

While clearly we did not solve oppression at the gathering (shucks!), 350 young feminists returned to their communities questioning and critiquing how to collectively organize without reproducing the very oppressions we are fighting against, and how to develop effective tools for anti-oppression work.

In my practice of feminism I view prostitution as a form of violence against women, racialized misogyny, and a form of exploitation that capitalizes on women’s oppression. I come to this opinion as a feminist, south Asian anti-violence worker.

Eco-feminists believe that women and nature share certain traits and are innately attuned. Both women and nature cycle through rhythmic patterns of death and renewal. And women, as caretakers of community life, have a greater awareness of the complex community-level interactions of ecology and nature.

In October 2008, under the theme of Toujours RebELLES-Waves of Resistance, 500 young feminists, aged fourteen to thirty-five, from all regions of Canada and Québec gathered in Montreal. What motivated a group of young Québec feminists to invest incommensurable energy and political courage in this adventure and organize what became the RebELLEs Movement?

We, sex workers, never disappear. We move, we hide, we get replaced and we adapt. To us sex work can be job that we love or that we hate. It is often a really bad job, but it is our livelihood and we don’t like seeing it threatened.

Father still knows best. Whether in the form of the medical establishment, the firm, or the way women’s sexuality continues to be stolen and policed, women continue to find out that our bodies are not our own.