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.

In 2010, many people ask the question: “Feminism? Isn’t that dead? We don’t need feminism anymore.” To that, RebELLEs responds, “heck yes we do! Wake up and dream, dream big sistahs!”

Fast Feminism disciplines philosophy. In it, Shannon Bell makes philosophy her boy; she makes it lick and shine her boot for having refused her sex, anatomy, and the female phallus the ontological place of privilege amongst the philosopher kings.

In light of the massive human rights violations we saw in Toronto in the midst of the G20 summit, the RebELLEs movement is putting out a mass call to action, to denounce this unprecedented repression of political dissent in Canada and to stand in solidarity with those victimized by the state.

In this collection of short essays, letters, interviews and speeches, Viviane Namaste addresses what she finds to be a central problem in the current body of work on transsexuality: the framing of trans issues in terms of identity. According to Namaste, this focus has served to erase the lived experiences of transsexuals and has curtailed any substantive discussion of the social and institutional conditions through which they experience oppression.