Red Tent Sisters

We've moved!

2011-04-04T17:14:00.001-04:00

We have a new blog! Check us out at Amy and Kim: In Conversation.

And the winner is...

2010-10-04T16:16:00.000-04:00

... Linda A. for her thoughtful and inspiring entry to our cape and a tiara event in August. Congratulations Linda!

And another congratulations to our runners-up, Kate Green and her two-year-old daughter, who spent an afternoon together fashioning their very own cape and tiara (see above)!

Linda kindly agreed to let us share her winning entry with you. So we have copied it here, verbatim, and hope you will find it as inspirational as we did.

In solidarity,

Amy and Kim

"If I had the world's most beautiful - and powerful -- cape and tiara for a day I would call a meeting of all the world’s women. I would help them to know and love their own minds and bodies. I would help women take their rightful place in the world without fear.

Airbrushes would be banished. Every magazine photo ever taken would suddenly show the truth of their subjects’ humanity. Models would be welcomed into the sisterhood as equals who are as beautiful as the rest of us.

Advertisers would sell their wares openly and honestly. Companies would treat the earth that sustains us with more respect.

Later that same day, I’d call a meeting of all the world’s men. I would show them how men and women can be strong together; that men need not be afraid of womens’ power.

Children would grow safely rooted in the soil of self-worth. Crude, hurtful jokes would disappear. We would love ourselves and others.

Sex would be a gift of passion and respect, to ourselves and others. We would speak freely. People would talk about masturbation calmly and openly in grocery store check-outs. We would celebrate our nerve endings without shame -- shame would definitely vaporize in my cape-and-tiara world.

At the end of the day, before I turned in my magic cape and tiara… I would quietly make miniature copies of each to carry with me everyday."

Learning the hard way: A tale of breastfeeding, the pill, and finding my calling

2010-09-26T12:36:00.000-04:00

Today I found out that our friend - artist and activist Julie Devaney will be editing a new anthology of Canadian stories about the intersection of our lives with medical care, and how these experiences shape and frame our lives. It got me thinking about one of the most profound experiences I have ever had with the medical system that has forever changed my life.

In late 2005 my daughter Mattea was born. Within weeks of giving birth my midwives were asking me about what form of contraception we intended to use. In a public health course for new moms I was taking, we had recently discussed all the contraceptive options and I was leaning towards trying the IUD as a no-fuss approach to long-term birth control. When I approached my doctor about it she informed me that the IUDs on the market have a low level of progesterone in them, which some women react to with negative side effects. She suggested we start with a progesterone-only form of oral birth control to see how my body took to it.

Within a few days the blissful breastfeeding relationship my daughter and I had been having since moments after her birth came to an abrupt end. Every time she went on my breast she would start sputtering and screaming. It was becoming increasingly distressing for both of us. Finally, at both our wit's end, I got my husband to take us to a breastfeeding clinic at East General Hospital. After a long wait, the nurse, with a speciality in lactation, took time to assess our latch, and ensure milk was coming out, and at last, admitted she did not know what the problem was.

After another day or two of stressful screaming and crying for both of us, the penny finally dropped for me that all these problems had started just after I started the pill. As an experiment, I stopped taking it. And sure enough, within a couple of days our problems resolved themselves. At my next meeting of my public health moms' group, I took a moment to share my experience with the other moms. The nurse who ran the course was kind - she allowed me to speak, nodded her head, but did take a moment to report when I was finished that there was likely no connection between the birth control pill and my experience.

The urgent need for me to find a new method of birth control is what led to my discovery of fertility awareness - a form of contraception and body awareness that I have now been practicing for nearly five years, and teaching for nearly three. I later discovered through my own research that synthetic progesterone can increase milk supply. Since mine was already quite abundant, I realized that the problem had been that my daughter was choking. I remembered the spluttering, the coughing, the screaming. She was hungry, I had milk, but it was just coming out too fast.

Since that day my life has completely changed. Through working with other women I have discovered dozens of other birth control side effects that women experience that often go dismissed by the medical community. I have also discovered what havoc hormonal contraceptives can wreak on the female body if and when it comes time for a woman to try to get pregnant. It has become my life's work to help women learn that there are effective and healthier approaches to contraception, and that the menstrual cycle is a vital determinant of a woman's overall health.

As unfortunate as this event was - this intersection of my body, the medical system, pharmaceuticals, and the health of my newborn daughter - I see it as a gift that has brought me to into a deeper relationship with my body and onto the path of my life's work.

If you have had a similar experience, please feel free to share it in the comments. If you feel you have a powerful story to share, please consider submitting it - Julie is accepting abstract submissions for her anthology and submission guidelines are available from Tightrope Books. If you would like to learn more about fertility awareness, I recommend you pick up a copy of Taking Charge of Your Fertility (Amazon link at left), or purchase a copy of the Justisse Method of Fertility Management manual,. You can also find yourself a fertility awareness educator; you can find a Justisse trained Holistic Reproductive Health Practitioner in your area by clicking here. I provide education in person in Toronto, and by distance using telephone or Skype. I also run regular group workshops which you can find on our main page, or in the calendar bar to the right. Whatever you do, always listen to your body. Never let a health professional tell you it is "all in your head." You are the expert on your own body.

If you have any questions about fertility awareness, please don't hesitate to contact me at amyatredtentsistersdotcom.

Thanks for helping us celebrate!

2010-09-22T15:59:00.000-04:00

A huge thank you to all our supporters for helping us celebrate three years in business and the completion of our long-awaited renovations this past Saturday. Our all day open house, which included face painting for the kids, a free Nia Class with our friend Jennifer Hicks, a toy talk by Red Tent Sisters' own Kim Sedgwick, and a "Love letters aren't just for lovers" writing workshop with the fabulous Chris Kay Fraser, were all well attended and a smashing success.

In the evening after the store closed, we ripped up the dance floor with our family and friends in an evening of celebration organized by our step-sister - the talented singer/songwriter Emma Cook.

We feel blessed to work with and serve such incredible women on a daily basis and are grateful to everyone in our extended community for helping us realize the vision of Red Tent Sisters. We look forward to continuing to provide a safe space for women and men to purchase products and services that support sexual and reproductive health and to providing education and support for those wishing to make more sustainable and body-friendly consumer and lifestyle choices.

Blessings and gratitude,

Amy & Kim

How do I find sperm-friendly lubricant?

2010-08-10T06:46:00.009-04:00

If you are trying to conceive, chances are you have heard of Pre-Seed, the only personal lubricant currently on the market that is designed with ingredients and a ph-balance that is suitable for conception. Although demand for this product is quite high, tracking down a place to purchase this sperm-friendly lubricant can still feel like a bit of a wild goose hunt. The Pre-Seed website allows you to search for independent retailers in the U.S., but the international listings (including Canada) are no longer readily available on their website.

If you are in the Toronto area, you can purchase Pre-Seed in one of its two packaging options (described below) from us - Red Tent Sisters - Toronto's only women's health boutique specializing in fertility and related products. If this is your first time buying a personal lubricant, you will be relieved to find that our store is a welcoming space with female-only staff.

If you live in Canada, you can order Pre-Seed from our online fertility and sexuality boutique. We do our best to ship on the same day as orders are placed, meaning that you can get your Pre-Seed in as little as 1-3 days if you choose express shipping, and 3-5 days if you choose standard shipping.

If you live in a metropolitan centre other than Toronto and you want to find a physical retail outlet close to you, you can contact Pre-Seed for a list of international distributors.

One thing to consider before purchasing is which format you would like your Pre-Seed lubricant in. When Pre~Seed was originally released, it featured pre-filled applicators and many women found there was more in an applicator than they needed. They've since changed the packaging to offer a tube that comes with 9 empty applicators that you can fill yourself with as little or as much of the lubricant as you need. Pre-Seed also makes a stand alone tube, without the applicators, called Pre. Keep in mind that the lubricant works best when it coats the cervix and the vaginal walls, so applicators are the better bet for assisting conception.

Lastly, remember that a woman's egg is only available for fertilization for 12-24 hours of each cycle, so Pre-Seed is irrelevant if you are using it during an infertile part of your cycle. If you are not familiar with identifying your fertile times, be sure to read a reputable book on the subject, like Taking Charge of Your Fertility or the manual for the Justisse Method of Fertility Management. Or, better yet, consult a Holistic Reproductive Health Practitioner (like Amy at Red Tent Sisters) to help you identify the unique parameters of your menstrual cycle. At Red Tent Sisters we provide individual and group instruction in fertility management.

What would you do with a tiara and a cape?

2010-07-31T14:50:00.004-04:00

We've fallen in love with this line of cards and magnets by Curly Girl that we are thrilled to now be carrying in Red Tent Sisters. We never tire of reading and admiring these mini works of art with quotes like "I am fairly certain that given a cape and a nice tiara, I could save the world." So, we've decided to add a little joyous creativity to the summer by inviting you all to our "What would you do with a tiara and a cape?" event. What's involved you ask? Simple - reply to this post or send us an email (info@redtentsisters.com) with a description of what you would do if you had a cape and a tiara for a day. Your submission can be one sentence or one page - your call. Read other people's posts, write supportive replies to your fellow female superheroes, and tell us which ones you love most. On September 1st we will choose our favourite piece and award the winner a $100 shopping spree to Red Tent Sisters (or ecosex.ca, if you don't live in Toronto).The winner will be featured in our September newsletter.

If you post online, don't forget to include information about how we can contact you in the event that you win!

Have fun!

Red Tent Sisters' First Annual CPC Run

2010-07-24T13:37:00.008-04:00

In 2004 what would sadly become a marathon of close encounters with breast cancer began with the diagnosis of my close friend, Kosu Boudreau during my pregnancy with Mattea. Shortly thereafter, following Mattea's birth, our mother - only 51 at the time - was diagnosed with breast cancer. This shook me to the core - so deeply that it would in fact take almost two years before I could connect with the rage, grief and fear I had experienced. As a new mother the emotions and concerns it raised were more than I could bear at the time. Shortly after my mother's diagnosis came the diagnosis of breast cancer in my grandfather's wife Pat - one of the healthiest and most active older women I know and a role model to me from a young age. Since then the announcements of breast cancer diagnoses have just kept coming - closer and closer together and women seemingly younger and younger.

Parallel to this journey has been my journey as a mother to navigate and minimize the risk of toxic exposures for my daughter to products and environmental contaminants known to, or suspected of, having negative consequences on health and development. My sister and I have also spent the last three years becoming informed about the lack of health and safety standards in women's personal products, and I have spent nearly three years treating women's reproductive concerns, many of which are unexplained but reflect radical imbalances of the body's natural hormonal system.

My desire to find an outlet for my advocacy efforts with regard to breast cancer, mothering, reproductive health and the environment, has led me to a recent appointment on the board of directors of WHEN - the Women's Healthy Environments Network. This organization - launched a couple of decades ago when all this talk of environment and health was still considered fringe and radical, works at a grassroots level to educate the public and advocates for policy change at a municipal, provincial and national level. Their work speaks to the heart of my desire for a future where we understand that the health of the planet is not separate from the health of our bodies and that it is all of our duties, as citizens of humanity, to work towards a preventative rather than remedial approach to our health and to the health of our planet.

Every year WHEN is the official sponsor for a fundraiser called CPC - the Cancer Prevention Challenge. This fundraiser is unique in that it is not tied to any particular event - like a marathon, but instead allows teams to raise funds in whatever way they choose, and to put their fundraising money toward a project or organization of their choice. As a newly elected member of the board at WHEN, we chose for 100% of our team funds to go towards WHEN and their upcoming breast cancer campaign. We also decided to make the Night Crawler 5-mile race our fundraising activity - feeling that running together would be a fun bonding experience and give us a fitness goal to aspire to at the same time.

We are happy to report that despite a small team for our first year, we did raise over $1500 in support of WHEN. Perhaps more important from a symbolic perspective, we ran with our mother - now cancer-free for almost five years - and she nearly showed us up with her running endurance!

We hope you will consider joining us in 2011 in the fight to prevent cancer by joining our team.

Ix Chel Graces My Garden

2009-07-14T21:52:00.009-04:00

Her glistening white bottom shakes and droplets of water cling to her skin. My daughter is totally in the moment – light dancing, water sprinkling, bum dancing naked in the garden mist. Ix Chel - goddess of the rainbow, is right here in my backyard, sprinkling angel prisms all over my grass.

I was first introduced to Ix Chel, the Maya Goddess of Fertility who also goes by the name "Rainbow Goddess", over five years ago on my first trip to Belize. Since then we are gradually becoming better acquainted as I dive deeper and deeper into my training in the Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Massage™. This massage owes much to the work of Maya Shaman Don Elijio Panti, and to his apprentice Rosita Arvigo, who now carries on his tradition. Don Elijio conversed regularly with the nine Maya spirits (as does Rosita) and incorporated their guidance into his healing techniques. When I entered this professional massage training I was not sure I could relate to this aspect of the work. I spent my entire week of training in Belize last year contemplating the role of faith in our practice and in the healing process. As a long-time agnostic I just wasn’t sure it was in me to use prayer or intention in my role of helping women with their reproductive health issues. As if in answer to my contemplation, the winds whipped closed Rosita’s window shutters during the final hour of our week’s training near San Ignacio last February and moments later an incredible rainbow arched across the sky above Rosita’s home. I knew in my heart this was more than mere coincidence.

I began writing this piece during a class last week with Chris Fraser, our inspiring writing coach who prompted us to finish the sentence "I don't want to forget this...". I couldn't help but smile when I came home that night to find a picture on our breakfast bar that Mattea had drawn during Goddess Girl camp that day. At the bottom a grown-up had clearly written "Rainbow Goddess" under her dictation. Mattea smiled at me. "It's for you Mama."

It seems everywhere I look these days, rainbows are blessing my path.

What does pride mean to you?

2009-06-14T16:03:00.010-04:00

As we approach pride week, it is a great time to reflect on what pride means to you. We invite you to write a comment sharing your own feelings about pride, or paste a link to your own blog post. We are also collecting photographs of people holding up signs with responses to the question "What does pride mean to you?" and will be compiling them into a little video creation. E-mail us your photographs at info@redtentsisters.com.

This is what pride means to me. Sitting around my dining table three weeks ago, with the smell of bacon still in the air, and the remnants of an extravagant Mother’s day brunch all around me, I gaze across the room. On the couch, one of my dearest friends, Anya, sits with her wife Tara, and they hold their three-month-old son, Caleb, between them. My daughter, Mattea, bounces on the couch beside them, extolling her love for her new “brother.”

Since Caleb’s birth, Mattea regularly jumps around asking me questions like:

“Why don’t I have two mommies?”

“Two vulvas can’t make a baby, right?”

Or saying things like:

“When I grow up I want to marry a girl too, like Anya.”

“I changed my mind, I think I want to marry a boy.”

I reflect on a long journey which has brought us here to this moment.

I met Anya not long before I entered Occupational Therapy school. I was immediately captivated by her Ukrainian accent, love of literature, her honesty and her humour. We became study pals and were thrilled when we both got into O.T. school at the same time. Anya’s own story seemed like an epic work of fiction to me – with Anya figuring as the heroine who defies all odds or stereotypes. Having taught herself English as a teen immigrant to Canada, fought to leave an abusive marriage, struggled to get accepted to University, financially put herself through school, and then got accepted to Occupational Therapy school on her first try, she mesmerized me with her tenacity.

In my final year of O.T. school, I arranged a placement in Uganda, East Africa. My soon to become fiancé, Jacob, came with me for the first few weeks. By then the three of us were close friends. One day Jacob went into town to one of three small internet cafes and returned to tell me that Anya had sent us an e-mail, coming out, and apologizing to us if this was shocking. In the same breath she wrote that we were in fact the first people she had told. We were honoured.

When we returned from Uganda, Anya was undergoing the painful process of moving out from the apartment she shared with her long-time boyfriend, getting settled in a new place, and beginning to enter the lesbian dating scene. Somehow this transitional phase in Anya’s life brought us all closer and we enjoyed weekly dinners at our new condo together at least once a week, evenings filled with decadent meals (cooked by Jacob), lots of wine on our small patio overlooking the St. Lawrence Market and city skyline, comedic television watching, and perhaps most importantly, trips to the McDonald’s downstairs for hot fudge sundaes with extra fudge.

Within a year, Anya had met someone she had hit it off with. When we had this woman - Tara, over for the first time to join one of our weekly dinners, it was not only obvious how much Tara adored Anya, but what a perfect addition she made to our dinner parties. Tara and Jacob talked tirelessly about politics and cooking, while Anya and I rolled our eyes and went off on our own to talk about our O.T. work, our families, books, and knitting. Tara and Jacob were alike in their effusive expressions of love and devotion to us. Anya and I were alike in the comfort we took from being doted on and loved unconditionally.

Our bonds to each other have served us through many major milestones in the past five years – two weddings, two pregnancies, two births, and one parental death. Anya and Tara are Godparents to Mattea. My mother and I were holding Anya’s legs as she pushed Caleb into the world this past February. The image of Tara’s face, choked with emotion and joy, as Caleb slipped out and was placed on Anya’s chest for the first time is one I will never forget.

As I glance across the room at this new family unit celebrating mother’s day for the first time, a wave of deep gratitude comes over me that we live in a city and country that has allowed these three people, whom I adore, to choose each other and to love each other, as they are meant to. I then look at my daughter, who, in great part due to Anya and Tara, has fluid ideas about love, family, sexual orientation, and choice. And my heart swells with pride. When it comes to LGBTQ rights, we may have a long way to go, but I am infinitely grateful for how far we have already come.

Write it again...

2009-05-20T14:59:00.009-04:00

Last night we held a parenting meetup at our store and a group of seven women gathered to discuss the book “How to talk so kids will listen, and listen so kids will talk.” After a lively and thought-provoking discussion I headed home from a long day at the store expecting to have a quick dinner and go straight to bed. Instead, I found that my three year old daughter was still awake; having been home sick all day and having had a disrupted sleep routine she was full of energy and wanting to spend time with me. I decided to put into practice some of the techniques the book recommends and which we had been discussing all evening. Four scenarios ensued, each more interesting than the last:

As I was preparing my dinner, my daughter decided she wanted a juice box. She went to the fridge and pulled out a three-pack. She asked me to break one off but not to peel off the plastic – she wanted to do that part herself. In the interests of preserving the plastic for her, I cut the plastic down the line between two of the boxes. After she had drunk one of the boxes, she reported she wanted another, and that she wanted to “cut” the plastic herself. I was reluctant. My daughter doesn’t have the best track-record when it comes to using sharp tools in a way that I consider safe. Knowing this would likely be much more challenging than cutting paper, I prepared to say “No.” Instead, I said “Yes, if you can find a way to cut it so that the scissors are pointed away from you so that I won’t be nervous.” “Okay she said.” She tried a couple of angles, and with my light guidance, eventually managed to safely cut away the plastic without hurting herself (or me!). As per the book’s suggestions about validating your child’s efforts, especially when they demonstrate something contrary to our role expectations of them (e.g., my daughter is careless with scissors), I quickly followed with “Wow. You really know how to use scissors safely.” “Yeah” she said. At the time she didn’t seem that affected my words, but a few moments later I knew it had actually made quite an impact because of what she chose to do next...

She showed me a picture of me as a child that she had found during the day. She told me she wanted to cut it. Again, remembering from the book to try to give positive options of what your child can do, I said “No, that picture is special to me, but you can cut up this picture” and I proceeded to point at one she had found that didn’t have any people in it. “Okay” she said and grabbed her scissors and the picture and started heading out of the room. “Where are you going?” I inquired. She looked at me and said matter-of-factly “You only like me to cut things up in the library, right?” I was bowled over. A couple of months ago my daughter had become quite obsessed with cutting up every piece of paper she could find and leaving the little bits all over the house. We had had endless arguments about cleaning up after herself and I had eventually resorted to asking her to keep her cutting to the library so I could at least contain the mess to one room of the house. I had never seen any evidence that she had heeded my request much. “Yes, that’s true. Thank you. That is very respectful of you.” Moments later she called me into the library to help her finish cutting the picture. Again, using a technique from “How to talk...” I commented “Oh. I see there are lots of little bits of paper on the floor.” She looked blankly at me. I followed with “Could you pick them up please and put them in the garbage?” (Probably not the best approach according to the book). She hesitated, then said “No but it makes you happy when I cut paper in this room, right?” I responded with “Yes that’s true. But it makes me even more happy when we clean up after ourselves and put the paper in the garbage.” She hesitated, then asked “Okay. Will you help me?” “Sure.” I replied. We picked up the pieces together, at which point I said “Boy, you really know how to clean up after yourself.” “Yeah, I do!” she responded. She proceeded to take the bits of paper to the kitchen garbage. She decided it was too full so asked me to take out the bag, and then... she filled it herself with a new garbage bag! I was quite pleased with us both.

My husband was heading out the door to quickly walk the dog before we all went to bed. My daughter reported she wanted to go on a “family walk.” It was late and I was tired, but knowing that it was unlikely she would fall asleep before my husband got home, and that I hadn’t had any fresh air that day, I replied “Okay. If you get some pants on we can go for a quick walk.” She headed upstairs with my husband to get dressed while I finished my just-prepared pasta dinner. I quickly heard an argument brewing upstairs... “No! I want to wear shorts!” said my daughter in a raised voice. “Mattea, it is too cold for shorts” I heard my husband saying in a patient but slightly exasperated voice. “No!” said Mattea again. She grabbed the shorts and came to find me. “Mommy, I want to wear shorts for our walk.” I thought back to the book again, and how they suggest handling situations where your child acts according to a pattern of behaviour you find unacceptable (I can’t tell you how many of the battles in her life have been related to wearing inappropriately cool clothing). I responded with “Mattea, those shorts are not warm enough for the weather tonight. If you want to go for a family walk, I expect you to find something more appropriate.” (Firm. Stated my expectations. Gave her some wiggle-room to choose something more appropriate.) I wasn’t sure how this one was going to go over. But low and behold, she quickly retorted with “Okay. How about if I wear my shorts and my pants?” “Okay” I replied. She ran off and quickly came back fully dressed.Nothing could have prepared me for what came next though.

When we returned from our walk she started to whimper and whine saying “I don’t want you to ever go to work.” At first I couldn’t hear her through the whimpering and burying her head in my duvet, but eventually I understood what she was upset about. This was a common refrain. I said, “I know, you really don’t like it when I leave.” She started repeating her words with more intensity – “Don’t ever leave!” she said with a grimaced face and her hands locked around my wrist, fingers tense and curled. Wanting to try a new technique, rather than my usual “I know it makes you sad and angry when I go to work” I offered up the drawing solution... “Would you like to draw me how you feel when I go to work?” She immediately stood up straight and said “Yeah!” in an enthusiastic voice. I quickly grabbed a pencil and paper and handed it to her. She looked at me and said “I don’t know how... can you do it?” I took the pencil and made some stabbing motions with the pencil on the paper, thinking this might give her the idea, then passed it back to her. She shook her head “No. I want to write the words, but I don’t know how. Can you write them for me?” “Okay” I replied. I took the pencil and wrote down as she dictated. Here is what she said: “Angry. Sad. Frustrated. Angry. Lonely. Angry. Miss you. Don’t want you to leave.” I had provided some of the suggestions when she couldn’t seem to think of the word. I read her back the list. I was feeling pretty proud of myself when she started her refrain again “I don’t want you to leave. Don’t ever leave!” over and over. It was getting very intense and I was at a loss as to what to do. Her nails were digging into my skin. I felt I was missing something. I tried to think of what other emotion she might have that I/we were missing. Finally, remembering a conversation we had had the previous week in which she had appeared to grasp the concept of death and was quite frightened, I looked her in the eyes and said, “Mattea, are you afraid that if I leave I might never come back?” She immediately burst into tears and wailed “I’m SCAAAAARRRRRRREEEEEEDDD.” She crawled into my lap and sobbed and hugged me “I’m scared you’re going to leave and never come back. And I’m scared that a monster is going to eat me. I need a night-light on when I sleep.” After a good cry, she seemed much better and headed for bed. I suggested we add “Scared” to her list of feelings. She agreed. I wrote it down (she showed me exactly where to write it). Then she asked if we could tape it up on her wall... and she wanted to read the list to Daddy. After doing that, I decided to try one more new strategy. “Do you want to make a list of all of the things you can do when you’re scared?” I asked. She agreed. I started the list with “Call Mommy when you are scared.” She added “Don’t go and never come back” (translation – always come back). I suggested she could ask whomever she was with when I would be home. She said “No, but how are they going to know when you will come back?” I said usually grown-ups know when I will be back. I asked her if it would be helpful if I told her when I would be back. She said yes and we added that to the list. Then she asked me to write “Don’t go and never come back.” I said, “Yes, we have that on the list right here,” I pointed. In a quiet but clear voice that had now lost its urgency, she looked at me with her swollen blue eyes and said, “write it again.”

I look forward to hearing stories from other parents, particularly those in our group last night, about experiences with applying the concepts from "How to talk...".

it gives me hope . . .

2009-05-12T16:30:00.002-04:00

Once a week, Amy and I meet with the inspiring writing coach, Chris Fraser, to write, reflect and drink tea. The following piece blossomed from a writing exercise where we were asked to begin with the sentence, "it gives me hope . . ."

It gives me hope to see young women coming in with their mothers, eager to celebrate their first menstruation. It gives me hope to see mothers coming in and saying I want a book for my daughter that is honest, that talks about masturbation and STI’s − that doesn’t leave the important stuff out. It gives me hope because it means a dialogue has begun and mothers are helping women at a young age learn to honour their bodies and celebrate their immeasurable beauty. There are so many choices and I am blessed to see women making them from a place of informed consent. It gives me hope to sit in a room with six other women to discuss masturbation and for not a single one to be ashamed to be there. It gives me hope to see women come into the store and say, “Why wouldn’t you use reusable menstrual products?” It gives me hope to hear men ask their partners, “Which toy would you like? What would make you feel good?” For every article I read about women’s choices being taken away, I am faced with women asserting their right to more information, more compassion, more acceptance. More.

Zen and the Art of Laundry

2009-04-28T09:44:00.012-04:00

When my daughter was born three and a half years ago, I was pretty dedicated to using cloth diapers. From an environmental, cost-savings, and hygiene perspective, it seemed like the right choice. As a new stay-at-home mom, I had to learn how to slow down for the first time in my life. I was learning to be in the moment, taking delight in simple pleasures and taking in my surroundings in a vivid way. Just before getting pregnant I had started studying Miksang with Michael Wood - an approach to photography that focuses on the splendour of our immediate experience – a visual haiku if you will. I explored the art of miksang with fervour during this time. Hanging laundry, taking photographs, and watching my little girl explore the world will forever be grouped together in my memory as a time of my life when my mind was at its stillest, calmest, and most present. I hung loads and loads of laundry up in our backyard, revelling in the beauty of it, the methodical act of folding it, the satisfaction of clean, crisp linen.

Over the past year my relationship with laundry has taken a nose-dive. Was it the 50-60 hour work weeks that made any task at home feel like simply one more thing between me and sleep or me and a hot bath? Was it the pools of cat urine on the laundry room floor from our cat Guido (who is prone to urinary tract infections and always thinks peeing in a new location will take away the pain)? Was it the fact that my laundry machine has broken such that it stops half-cycle and I have to go back to the basement and slam the lid down in order to get it running again? Probably a combination of all of the above.

Yesterday that all changed. The weather in Toronto went up over 25°C and I could no longer ignore that I had at least seven loads of laundry to do and our whole family was starting to look a little shabby. I rewashed a load of laundry that had been sitting wet in the washer for – yes, I admit it – almost two weeks. I took my daughter to Canadian Tire and we picked out fresh new clothes pegs and went home to hang our first load. It was like falling in love all over again. The hanging, the pinning, the warm sun, the light spring air. I revelled in the uplifted mood it brought me as Mattea and I headed over to the store for our weekly Conscious Parenting Meetup – this week being run by Marlo Shaw – all about cloth diapers. We talked about the benefits of cloth diapers. Marlo handed around samples. I admitted that although Mattea had been out of daytime cloth diapers since the age of a year and a half, she still needs diapers at night and we have been using disposables for nearly two years. I fingered the sample diapers, the hemp, the bamboo, the organic cotton, and the textures brought back fond memories.

Last night, instead of pulling out a plastic disposable pull-up diaper covered in princesses and castles for Mattea, I pulled out an old cotton cloth diaper and a woollen aristocrat cover for her. After tucking her into bed I went outside and hung my third load of laundry for the day up under the moonlight. “I’ve missed you” I whispered to the laundry under the clear night sky.

What memories or significance does laundry hold for you, if any? Is there another daily or weekly chore that brings you a deep sense of satisfaction and peace?

The Power of Art

2009-04-26T14:17:00.008-04:00

This is the power of art. This week my sister and I received two powerful pieces of bad news. The details are not important right now, but suffice it to say it was enough to make two young feminist entrepreneurs feel like crawling into a cave and never coming out again. But we did, and it was due in no small part to the magic of art, craft, and connection.

Our first dose of all of the above came on Tuesday morning when we met up with a group of fabulous female entrepreneurs to have a craft session. The six of us sat in the One in the Only Cafe, telling our tales of woe, celebrating our successes, offering advice and support, drinking lattes, cutting up pictures, using glue-sticks, taking photographs, crying and laughing. Sometimes the best business meetings are craft gatherings.

Our second dose of this healing magic came on Thursday (which was good timing because Tuesday’s magic was just wearing off), when we joined our friend Chris for our weekly writing session. Sensing that business writing might not be on our minds that day, she intuitively guided us down a different path, engaging us in a meditation on our future selves – the old woman who reaches back to us across time to give guidance and wisdom to our present-day stressed-out selves. After writing letters to ourselves (and Chris promises to mail them to us at some future unexpected date), I held the beauty and wisdom of that wise woman’s words through another day of uneasiness and worry.

By Friday night I was in need of another dose of magic. I found it in the form of a new twitter friend who creates uterus and vulva art. Having recently had new business cards made up that say “uterus lover” and having now established an online identity as such (Twitter name = UterusLover), I found great joy and solace in ordering myself a six-foot wide plush pink uterus mascot!

Throughout the week I re-watched the music video “Art” – another Chris Fraser recommendation – at moments when I needed to ground myself in something deeper and more profound than my problems. And I endulged in reading the blogs and twitter posts of my friends Jamie and Danette. I fingered the small smooth citrine stone given to us this week by our friend, marketer and angel, Carrie.

This morning’s stress-stomping moment of beauty was squatting with my daughter to watch a snail make its way across a rain-drenched road.

Although none of these moments were directly involved in solving the serious problems we face, they performed perhaps an even more important task – preventing me from getting too stuck in the icky details of life and staying with what is honest and true – there is beauty all around.

“You can change your life by simply opening your eyes.” – author unknown

What acts of art and beauty sustained you this week?

Moon Time Mosaic Maker

2008-12-26T14:38:00.006-05:00

A few months ago I learned how to create photo mosaics using Flickr by following a fun and thoughtful exercise posted on my friend Danette Relic's Blog. Since then, I have created my own little mosaic exercise inspired by another friend, colleague, and menstrual activist named Miranda Gray. Knowing that our days of menstruation are days when we may have lpossibly the least access to our left brain - a harder time communicating verbally and an easier time communicating through imagery and dreams, I use this time to create a mosaic of images that remind me of values, goals, activities, and passions that I hope will guide me and center me in my upcoming moon cycle. Here is what you do:

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What am I looking forward to in the coming month?
2. What icons and images are resonating with me right now?
3. What activities can I do this month that will ground me in my values?

When you come up with at least six objects, ideas or responses to these questions, search Flickr based on these words and find an image that speaks to you. Sometimes the image will clearly depict the idea you had in mind (for example, the image in my mosaic of the woman blissfully enjoying her music), other times the image that you choose may have nothing to do with the original idea you were trying to convey (as is the case with my Peacock). This doesn’t matter. What matters is that the images in your mosaic invoke the mood or tone that you want to set for your coming month. When you have chosen your images, upload them to the Mosaic Maker site and enter the URL for each flickr image that you chose (I keep a copy of the URLs in a word document so that in the event that the site crashes I don’t lose all my chosen images) into the designated spaces. Then press “Create Mosaic” and voila! You can save, print, edit and share your mosaic. Have fun and feel free to share your own creations by posting a response to this entry!

Candles, community & creation: An event in commemoration of the Montreal Massacre

2008-12-11T11:10:00.010-05:00

This past Saturday about 12 women gathered in our basement at Red Tent Sisters for a candlelight vigil and silk painting project to honour the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. For those who may be too young to remember, this day commemorates the loss of 14 women who were shot and killed by Marc Lepine at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, on December 6, 1989. Marc declared he hated feminists before shooting 28 people and eventually shooting himself. Although I was only 11 years old at the time and have no memory of the news story at the time, I do remember developing an acute awareness of the day and its significance over the next few years as commemoration ceremonies and other aspects of my education gradually expanded my awareness of social justice issues. I have a distinct memory of standing in the rotunda at Jarvis Collegiate during a December 6th ceremony and being struck with profound sadness at the divisiveness of gender issues. I remember feeling very privileged, very fortunate, and very naive. I was overcome with gratitude that the men in my life were role models of love, respect, and mutual honouring. This Saturday it dawned on me that it had probably been over ten years since I participated in a commemoration event of this nature. The evening struck me in many of the same ways as it had those years ago in the rotunda, and in some new ways. As an owner of a feminist business, I am much less naive and sheltered than I was then. We are regularly subjected to misogynist, threatening men in our store. I am more acutely aware of my safety than I was at that time in my life, especially when I am alone in the store on an evening and a male customer comes in. And yet, the number of times a man braves to come in our store looking for organic tampons for his wife (as one man did last week), or for a book about how to please his female partner better, or to buy a gift for his newly menstruating daughter all seem to outnumber the frequency, or at least impact, of those negative male encounters. Kim and I are both blessed with male partners who have been nothing but supportive of our business vision and what we are trying to create here (and when I say supportive - I mean you have no idea what we have put these guys through). From this vantage point, I hold two important truths in my heart: women all over the world, including me, continue to live in fear of men - of their power, their anger, their aggression, and for this reason we as a global community still have much work to do. On the other hand, the kind of love that is needed to overcome this systemic problem is a love that goes beyond gender or duality and there is evidence that this love not only exists, but is growing and spreading. And that I know with a deep sense of faith because I see it in the eyes of our customers every day - both men and women alike.

Many thanks to our speakers - Raine from the YWCA and Claudette from the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre. Enormous thanks to Zeisha for facilitating the silk painting, and Jaclyn, our outreach coordinator, for coordinating the event. To donate to the December 6th fund which offers interest-free loans to women fleeing violent homes, please click here.

Reflections on Turning 30

2008-11-20T17:23:00.003-05:00

When you are a small business owner and mother in a family of four (plus three pets), sometimes the best possible gift you can receive is the gift of solitude and reflection. Today was such a day. This afternoon after leaving the store early around 1pm, I ventured down the street with no intention other than to arrive at my Thai massage appointment three blocks away sometime before 3:30pm. I entered a new second-hand bookstore a few doors down from Red Tent Sisters called Circus. There I indulged in riffling through used collections of poetry by both well-known and little-known poets, relishing the delicious taste of having nowhere to be and nothing to do. I stumbled upon two works that spoke to me: a collection of poems to the Goddess, entitled Her Words, and a book of Sufism with quotes by Rumi, among others. After leaving Circus with my two new collections in tow, I wandered further along the Danforth hoping to discover a quaint place to curl up with my new titles, lamenting the recent closure of our local cafe and retreat, Chocolate Heaven. In good birthday fortune, I stumbled upon a new Espresso Bar which turned out to be connected to a long-time family favourite bar and brunch space called The Only Cafe. On entering I confirmed the fortuitousness of this new find as I encountered a scene of comfort, intellect and community amid a chess tournament and comfy armchairs. I ordered a latte and before settling into my poetry paused to take in a scene I would love to have photographed - the beauty of the brown and white swirl of my latte in its wide-mouthed mug, the paisley pattern of my new Sufism book, the low lighting and electricity of friendly competition in the air, the subtle sounds of CBC jazz playing in the background. Every poem seemed to speak to me, but perhaps the most fitting for the day was "When a Woman Feels Alone" by May Sarton. After revelling in this scene of poetry for close to an hour, I headed out to the Riverdale Homeopathic Clinic where I was booked to see Elizabeth Ewanchuk for a Thai massage. Elizabeth describes her work as a moving meditation and her attitude towards her work is contagious. I spent over an hour and a half breathing into passive stretches and attempting to loosen my grip, both literally and figuratively. I suspect my thirties will be all about faith and surrender. My thirtieth birthday afternoon was like an "amuse-bouche" at the beginning of a long and delicious meal.

When a Woman Feels Alone
"When a woman feels alone,
when the room Is full of daemons," the Nootka tribe
Tells us, "The Old Woman will be there."
She has come to me over three thousand miles
And what does she have to tell me, troubled
"by phantoms in the night"?
Is she really here?
What is the saving word from so deep in the past,
From as deep as the ancient root of the redwood,
From as deep as the primal bed of the ocean,
From as deep as a woman's heart sprung open
Again through a hard birth or a hard death?
Here under the shock of love, I am open
To you, Primal Spirit, one with rock and wave,
One with the survivors of flood and fire,
Who have rebuilt their homes a million times,
Who have lost their children and borne them again.
The words I hear are strength, laughter, endurance.
Old Woman I meet you deep inside myself.
There in the rootbed of fertility,
World without end, as the legend tells it.
Under the words you are my silence.

Exposure: October's Feminist Film Circle Screening

2008-10-26T15:14:00.005-04:00

Last night my emerging identity as an activist was refreshed and reenergized as a dozen of us sat and watched “Exposure: Environmental Links to Breast Cancer” at our monthly feminist film circle. Two and a half years ago, shortly after my daughter’s birth, our (Kim and my) mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. In my sleep-deprived state of new motherhood I was sorting out complex issues of motherhood: immense lifestyle upheaval, the challenges of feeling like a walking breast, renegotiating my sexuality, my relationship to my husband, friends and family and of course learning how to function on four hours of sleep on a regular basis. I was falling deeply in love with my child and thus life was a haze in the way it always is when we are merging and emerging from complete symbiosis with another human being. There was little room in my brain or my heart for finding meaning to what my mother was facing.

When I first viewed part of this film at last year’s Women’s Health Matters Forum, tears began to stream down my face as I sat unaccompanied in an auditorium filled with over a hundred women. I knew it was time to give space to my grief and fear, but above all I knew it was time to embrace environmental activism. If becoming a mother and watching my mother experience breast cancer had taught me anything, it was that we have a duty to act.

A year later, after my sister and I have made every effort to “go green” in our store – carrying only phthalate-free sex toys, paraben and phthalate-free lubricants, and eco-friendly menstrual alternatives, this film served as encouragement and validation of our path. For every tampon user we convert to a diva cup user, for every woman we support to come off hormonal contraceptives, we take one step closer to a healthier life and a healthier planet. I have never experienced as much satisfaction and conviction that the work I do makes a difference, as I have since opening this business with my sister.

Exposure is a striking film in many regards. The film is nearly ten years old but rings true to our experience today. One of the most disturbing things about this film is recognizing how much was already known ten years ago when the film was produced and is only now being acted upon. For example, Bisphenol-A, a chemical used in the production of plastics including baby bottles and water bottles, was known to be an endocrine disruptor over a decade ago. Government banning of this substance in Canada has only occurred in the past year. Pesticides, x-rays, chlorine, pharmaceuticals, and radiation are some of the other carcinogenic materials that have been linked to increased breast cancer rates among women, in addition to these plastics. There is still much work to be done to reduce the toxicity of our environment and our bodies.

Fran and Mahalia, two volunteers from WHEN - the Women’s Healthy Environments Network, facilitated a discussion and provided practical advice for change following the screening. They helped us to process our shock and sadness (this film still brought me to tears the second time around) and to channel that energy into simple solutions to reduce our risk. Some easy tips included:

1. Don’t microwave your food in plastic
2. Use Pyrex or stainless steel food and beverage containers whenever possible
3. Exercise regularly
4. Sweat out toxins in your body using saunas, particularly infrared saunas
5. Wear proper-fitting bras and/or wear bras less often as this will promote better lymphatic flow
6. Choose organic foods whenever possible, and avoid animal meats that have been fed growth hormones
7. Avoid unnecessary x-rays
8. Examine your breasts regularly

WHEN provides a resource guide for the film which is absolutely packed with information; I couldn’t begin to do it justice. However, Fran and Mahalia made special mention of a few good books, including The Secret History of the War on Cancer, by Devra Davis, Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, and The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Breast Cancer. At Red Tent Sisters we are also a fan of Susan Weed’s book Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way.
I would like to thank our brave and ever-compassionate mother, Margaret Weller, for the gift of environmental activism that she has given us through her experience of breast cancer. I would like to also thank Fran and Mahalia for giving their time on a Friday night to help educate us on this topic. Lastly, I would like to thank all the women who attended last night’s event and donated generously to WHEN. Your presence means more to me than you can possibly know.
The quote on my office wall never seemed more poignant than last night...“Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing.”- Arundhati Roy

Pretty is What Changes: October Book Club Pick

2008-10-21T16:19:00.005-04:00

Breast cancer is buzzing in the media almost everywhere we look this month making October’s official designation as “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” practically impossible to miss. In its honor, Red Tent Sisters’ reading selection for our monthly book group deals with a very “au currant” breast cancer related topic—a genetic test that is now available for identifying “the breast cancer gene”, and of course the ethical debates that it spawns. First time author, Jessica Queller, TV writer for Gilmore Girls and One Tree Hill, turns to her own personal encounters with cancer, with the frighteningly advanced world of genetic technology and with overwhelming decisions that it brings about to produce what I thought was a gracefully written, emotionally-gripping and thought provoking memoir. In “Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny” Jessica Queller makes a valuable contribution to the rapidly expanding body of breast cancer related popular literature.

Without a great deal of ethical deliberation or emotional preparation, Jessica takes a test for the breast cancer gene mutation shortly after losing her mother to an agonizing struggle with ovarian cancer (we also learn that her mother endured and overcame breast cancer years earlier). Unexpectedly, 34 year old Jessica—who also happens to be emphatically single and childless—tests positive for the BRCA-1 mutation, immediately burdening her with the knowledge that she has up to an 87% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer and up to a 44% lifetime risk of developing ovarian cancer. As readers, we accompany Jessica through her information-(and soul)-seeking quest that eventually leads to her decision to undergo a preventative double mastectomy.

With a knack for comprehensibly interweaving complicated medical information into her personal narrative, “Pretty is What Changes” was as informative for me as it was emotionally satisfying. I found this to be appropriate for a book that asks (and ultimately answers “yes” to) the question “Is knowledge power?” From listening to the breast cancer experiences of participants in last Friday evening’s discussion group, I learned that the emotional flexibility demanded of the author to alternate between the voice-of-reason and the frantic voice-of-emotion, reflected many women’s feelings of having to bear not just the physical and emotional burden of illness, but also the burden of responsibility to take health-related decision making into their own hands with sound rationality and factual clarity. Shifts in access-to-information and decision-making authority from doctor to patient (changes that are in many ways indebted to the Women’s Health Movement of the 70’s) are thankfully important principles of our contemporary medical milieu. I was glad to find that the book expressed the overwhelming aspects of such responsibility that are often overshadowed by an emphasis on “patient empowerment” in this age-of-information and self-help.

The theme of bringing a sense of community to the potentially isolating experience of disease, is significant in the book as we see Jessica reaching out to online (and real world) breast cancer networks of women for information-sharing and moral support. It is no wonder that the book she produces herself serves the similar purpose of providing a narrative through which readers can mediate and make sense of their own similar experiences and of bolstering a (quickly growing) public breast cancer discourse.

Though Queller makes an honest effort to avoid a preachy tone, and insists that she is not necessarily advocating her choices to her audience, she ends the book by sharply and unquestionably asking her readers to seize the opportunities that biomedical technology offers. For Jessica, the luxury of living her life on her own timeline and according to her own inclinations (with respect to career, romance and childbearing, for instance) was robbed from her with the knowledge of her BRCA-1+ status. With “choice” and its feminist implications at the heart of this book, I’d like to highlight a brilliant analogy she makes at one point between the menu of options for consumers of breast reconstruction surgery, and the vast menu of drink options at Starbucks. She is certainly right that the exercise of custom-ordering our latte (or our breasts for that matter) according to our inner visions of ourselves can feel terrifically empowering. She fails to offer her reader the insight, however, that in being engrossed in such “choices” we often forget to ask ourselves whether (or why) we really wanted the latte (or the breast reconstruction) in the first place. In fact, as Amy pointed out on Friday, the option of NOT reconstructing her breasts after her mastectomy isn’t even entertained once in the book.

And while we’re on the subject of feminism, it must be said that as much as Queller’s narrative provides a rough script with which we can navigate the options that come along with our respective cancer-statuses, she does the same for that of our gender-status. Unfortunately, her vision of femininity is really rather narrow. She limits her reflection of the sexual significance of her breasts to being merely lures for potential male mates, granting them no sexual value in-it-of-themselves. Regarding the fulfillment of her desires to mother, she sooner turns to reproductive technologies before ever entertaining the possibility of adoption. Her affluent Hollywood lifestyle allows her to contemplate the philosophical consequences of the BRCA test and of preventative mastectomy without ever having to think about class issues of access to the test and to healthcare itself. Most objectionable, I’d say, is that for Jessica, the tragedy of her genetic discovery lies not in the fact that her life might be truncated but rather in that it might end before she can fill her feminine duty of becoming a wife and mother.

Queller’s memoir, as truly enjoyable a read as it was for me, is most certainly not an exception to trends I have found in my own research, which finds breast-cancer related media to be an especially lucrative site for promoting uncritical submission to biomedicine and for reproducing a very limited image of femininity. If and when you read Pretty Is What Changes”, help me reflect on why this might be, and help honor Breast Cancer Awareness month by bringing your brilliant feminist minds to Red Tent at the end of the month, when we continue this discussion.

- Jaclyn Isen, Honourary Red Tent Sister & Blogger

Response to Film Screening of Sexy Inc. & Accompanying Presentation

2008-09-29T19:01:00.007-04:00

At Red Tent Sisters’ in-store event last Friday evening, the film “Sexy Inc” was coupled with a presentation by my friend and fellow Women’s Studies MA graduate, Laura Cayen, on her thesis work on trends in birth control marketing. The pairing turned out to be even more fitting than I had anticipated. Considering the heightened presence of sexual representation in our cultural environment, stressed in the film—and its toxic effects on our youth—when situated against the peculiar absence of an explicit sexual discourse in birth control ads, made for a very alarming juxtaposition.

Sophie Bissonnette’s documentary, “Sexy Inc.” through interviews with pre-teenaged girls, and through the numerous examples shown, illustrates that the space of girlhood has been violently invaded, eroticized, pornified. Young consumers are no longer exceptions as targets of the longstanding and widely-uttered marketing mantra “sex sells”. Even the apparently toddler-aged baby “Bratz” dolls, are sold by being freakishly sexualized, and given flirty lashes, pouty lips and belly-tops. “Tweens”, as the film points out, is a corporate construction that functions to widen the span of the Teen market, bombarding pre-adolescent girls with products they do not need and more importantly, are perhaps not ready for. In one particularly resonant moment in the film, audiences were asked to trace images back to their origins in either a teen or porn magazine. Their failure at this task successfully proved the point that pornographic representation has shifted dramatically from the margins to the mainstream, and as a result, is tragically damaging the sexual identity development of our youth.

But while sex is being used to sell toys, toys are bizarrely being used to sell sex—or at least the implication of it anyway. The youthful design on Alesse-Canada’s interactive website, or Ortho-tricyclin’s ‘design-your-own pill-compact-contest’ are just two examples of what Laura has termed the “accessorization” of birth control, by which its aesthetic value is privileged over its sexual value. As she cleverly demonstrates in her presentation, the sanitization and concealment of sex in advertisements for oral contraceptives, despite the explicitness of sex elsewhere, makes this product guiltlessly marketable to a younger demographic; preparing girls physically but not socially or emotionally to negotiate healthy and consensual sexual relationships. So, regardless of the connotations of feminist empowerment that the mainstreaming of birth control might superficially signal, the messages in these ads fail miserably at equipping its consumers with a truly empowered conception of female sexuality.

The point that Laura’s research drove home, in conjunction with the film’s critique of our hypersexualized cultural reality, is that we are still far from being liberated when it comes to talking about, representing and expressing sexuality, contrary to the façade of empowerment that the media aims to promote. If anything, these hypocrisies remind us that sexuality— and female sexuality, most notably—is something that we remain deeply anxious, and disturbingly troubled by as a culture.

Mary, a former Red Tent Sisters staff member and blogger and close friend of Amy & Kim, commented that although the film provided an important critique of the pornification of our cultural climate and its invasion of innocence, it disappointingly re-inscribed the traditional denial that girls are in fact sexual beings with real desires and curiosity. But when the sexual-role models that girls have access to are limited to depictions of women who repeatedly attain their sexual gratification from being the objects and recipients of desire rather than informed sexual actors, the articulation of a more sex-positive feminist perspective is made increasingly dangerous.

I agree with the point that by disproportionately giving voice to the pro-sensorship/anti-porn side of the feminist spectrum of sexual politics, the film runs the risk of upholding negative stereotypes of feminists as “prudish” or “frigid”. In one particular sequence in the film, kids that looked as young as 5 or 6 were given the activity of clothing an ad of an almost-nude American Apparel model with arts-n-crafts. While the impact of this culture-jamming stunt was no doubt, quite resounding, I was left feeling unsettled when the children obediently uttered something to the shame-inducing effect of “its bad to show your private-parts”. I wholeheartedly advocate for the film’s overall remedy for this phenomenon of hypersexualization—that is, equipping our children with the critical thinking skills they need to begin intellectually and emotionally dealing with the representations they encounter. I remain unconvinced, however, that this particular example successfully accomplished such. In any case, though the event revealed some very disheartening realities about our still sadly anti-feminist cultural marketplace, the critical dialogue it inspired, and the efforts of Red-Tent Sisters preserves my faith in the power and persistence of feminist thinking, community and action.

Sex and the City: The Movie... A Review

2008-07-03T14:08:00.003-04:00

Although we have lost our official Red Tent Sister blogger, Ellen, to Korea for the year, she has paid us a surprise visit with this recent blog entry on Sex and the City: The Movie. Thank you Ellen!

Sex and the City

A review of the movie and [some of] the boundaries it doesn't push ...

[beware: spoilers below!]

Despite my interest in talking about all things sexual and my friends' assurance that Sex and the City was a TV show I would love, I never became a regular viewer. I saw a few episodes here and there when housemates had the show on and I have a general idea of what the show was about, but that's all. I'm now living in South Korea and opportunities to experience a taste of home are not everyday occurrences. Thus when THE Sex and the City movie came out, I went to see it with a friend.

The movie had the feel of one REALLY long TV episode and I had the feeling that if one had followed the show and was experiencing the re-birth and reunion of the characters whose lives they had followed over several years, one would have enjoyed the movie more than I did. That said, I did enjoy the movie - it just wasn't amazing.

What I want to focus on in this blog post is how the movie script developed in such a way that opportunities opened up for the movie to push some normative social boundaries. Unfortunately the script followed the road more traveled and concluded with a stereotypical fairytale ending for the main character - marriage to her prince charming.

The TV show and movie feature four, now adult girl friends whose friendship is based in New York city. In the movie Charlotte is happily married and after adopting a daughter she becomes pregnant - a life-long dream for her. Her life in the movie pretty much follows the normative path of marriage and children. Since this "path" is a reality for many individuals her presence in the show/movie is useful as she provides one "type" of character for women to relate to. What interested me and what I really want to address today are the the other three characters' relationship woes and how their stories progress.

First of all, Miranda. Near the beginning of the movie her husband has a one night stand with another woman and for most of the movie Miranda finds herself unable to forgive him - perhaps partly because she is unable to forgive herself. She struggles with the feeling that others blame her for the infidelity - that she made it happen because she "let the sex go out of the marriage". Miranda grapples with the fact that the demands of marriage and motherhood and work made a satisfying and regular sex life fall to the bottom of the priority list - and how this change of priorities affected her relationship with her life partner.

In this way the movie does deal with the reality of many women's lives and perhaps also men's lives. At least this is the line of thought that popular literature would have us believe with its frequent commentary on ways to to "keep the flame alive". As a sidenote, I'm not married or a working mother AND I haven't focused my studies in this area so I'm not sure how accurate this representation is. I just know it is a concern that is commonly addressed in pop culture. Also as a sidenote [and getting somewhat off track!] I'm not sure I'm convinced that all this attention should be paid to maintaining a "fabulous" sex life that is the focus of so many pop culture items [I'm thinking in particular here of mainstream magazines].

Getting back to the movie. In the end Miranda and Steve get back together. Although the theme of "reunion because of love despite all the odds" follows a fairytale plot line, the idea of reunion after an affair challenges the idea that couples break up after infidelity. This IS something I read about in a report somewhere at some point :) and I know that a surprisingly high number of couples stay together after infidelity, contrary to the popularized notion that an affair means the end of a relationship.

Moving on. Samantha finds herself unable to stay in a monogamous relationship and breaks up with her common-law partner. In her words she chooses a relationship with herself over a relationship with a guy. This is somewhat boundary challenging as Samantha is a character that, while heading towards her 50th birthday chooses to be single and respectful of her own needs rather than stay in a more normative heterosexual couple. I think the movie could have been even MORE progressive had it introduced the idea of long term "open" relationships and/or the idea of being polyamorous. Why did Samantha have to leave her wonderful relationship just so she could "satisfy" another part of her - the part that likes to have sex with a variety of partners?

Last but definitely not least, is Carrie - the main character. Happily in a long term relationship, her and partner decide to get married for financial security reasons. The marriage becomes a lot bigger than the civil ceremony Mr. Big [her partner] had in mind. Scared by all the pomp and circumstance, he jilts Carrie on their wedding day. They spend most of the rest of the movie separated with Carrie attempting to mend her broken heart. In the final scenes of the movie they are reunited and almost manage to push boundaries - they question why they ever wanted to get married in the first place when they were so happy being life partners without the married label. Unfortunately Mr. Big pops the question, in a romantic way this time, and they end up getting married at the city hall.

Importantly the movie reinforces the idea of getting married for oneself instead of to enjoy "the wedding experience/dream". This is a significant message in today's increasingly materialistic society where many weddings have become consumerist experiences to the extreme. However, I think the movie could have been more "revolutionary" had Carrie and Mr. Big decided that they could have their happily ever after ending without Carrie changing her last name and without the official wedding ceremony.

There are many other "things", such as agism, beauty norms, and classism especially, that could be addressed when reviewing this movie, however, it was the above observations about relationships that really jumped out at me. I'll end this post here, hopefully I've given you something to think about ... and not ruined the movie for you should you decide to see it!

Mary Harrison (Sunday Sister) Attends Hit & Run Cd Release

2008-05-28T14:31:00.003-04:00

On Thursday, May 22 Emma Cook, sister to Red Tent Sisters Amy and Kimberley Sedgwick, released her second CD, Hit and Run, at the Lula Lounge in Toronto. Emma played her poignant and saucy songs to a full house while one notable two-year-old fan danced up a storm. I love Emma’s music and I’m so glad that her CD is available at Red Tent Sisters because I see a lot of similarities in the philosophies behind both the music and the store. Introducing one of her songs, Emma explained that part of the impetus behind her writing is a desire to see and hear strong women in the arts and media who don’t fit snugly into the false and simple stereotypes that society has created for them. In particular, women’s sexual identities are always far more complex and interesting than the simple virgin/whore, good girl/bad girl dichotomy dominating mainstream consciousness. Emma’s song, “Even Your Momma can Wear Stiletto Boots,” refuses to assign categories of female identity. She sings: “We’re torn apart into pieces/ One walks the streets and the other looks after the kids/ Why can’t we occupy the same spaces/ One woman, two different faces.” Emma also performed this song at the grand opening of Red Tent Sisters, which was so appropriate because the store honours all sides of women’s identities. At Red Tent Sisters there is no ‘either/or’ about women’s sexual and reproductive health choices. What makes the store so unique is the opportunity it presents for women to pick up information and products for pregnancy, menstruation, general health, and sexuality all in one space. It captures the kind of holistic approach to identity and body that Emma seeks in her music. I’m excited by the fresh perspectives and attitudes offered by Hit and Run and Red Tent Sisters. Let’s continue to support artistic and business initiatives seeking to affirm women’s human dynamism!

Hit and Run, Emma Cook, 2008

Learn more about Emma and her music at www.emmacookmusic.com or www.myspace.com/grrremma

DivaCup to the Rescue

2008-03-27T19:49:00.001-04:00

I’ve been using the DivaCup for over 3 years now and I certainly don’t need to be convinced of its many virtues. However, my recent trip to Costa Rica gave me one more reason to love my reusable cup.

I arrived in San Jose on day two of my period. Having recently gone off the pill, my flow was particularly heavy. Unfortunately, there were no bathrooms except for the public washroom in the bus terminal which charged 250 colonnes (about 50 cents). Having arrived with $50 US bills (the banks in Toronto didn’t take into account that these would be rather useless in a third world country where the average meal is less than $4), I was out of luck. I was going to see if I get some change from the ticket booth operator, but our bus arrived before I got the chance. The bus didn’t have a washroom, which would have been fine except the trip was about 4 hours and we didn’t stop once! We finally got onto the ferry, which thankfully had a toilet (that you didn’t have to pay for!) I was grateful that I wasn’t wearing a tampon, since I would have had to worry about toxic shock. Not to mention you aren’t allowed to flush anything (including toilet paper) in Costa Rica because their septic system can’t handle it. While I’m not concerned with hiding my menses, I’m not sure anything else needed to be added to the overflowing garbage bin (don’t get me started on the smell . . .)

Considering I spent the entire week in my bathing suit, I was grateful I didn’t have to wear a pad, nor did I have to scrounge up change to use the bathroom every couple of hours. While I could have done without the cramps on my travels, the Divacup made my period a minor inconvenience, rather than a disaster.

The HPV Vaccine

2008-03-13T17:22:00.000-04:00

Our Sunday Sister, Mary Harrison, compiled the following information about the HPV vaccine for Red Tent Sisters.

* There are over 100 strains of HPV, 35 of which affect reproductive/genital organs. Some of these 35 are high-risk, which means that, if persistent, they can cause cervical cancer in women. Some are low-risk, which means they are less frequently associated with cancer, but can cause genital warts (which can be treated much like warts on other parts of the body). With a healthy immune system and low risk factors, most women’s bodies fight the infection and eliminate it within 9 to 13 months of contraction.

* Most women with HPV do not contract cervical cancer. Most fatal incidents of cervical cancer affect poor women, women with compromised immune systems, and women who face structural inequities and oppression such as racism, colonialism, and violence in their lives. About 0.002% of the female population – around 400 women – dies of cervical cancer in Canada per year. Death rates are higher in parts of the world where Pap screening is unavailable and where poverty and poor nutrition are prevalent issues.

* Gardasil is the first HPV vaccine approved for use in North America. It prevents infection from strains 6 and 11, which can cause genital warts, and from strains 16 and 18, which can cause cervical cancer. These strains are responsible for 70% of cervical cancer cases. The vaccine does not protect against other types of HPV which account for the final 30% of cervical cancer cases. The vaccine is a preventative measure; it does not cure cancer or warts associated with HPV.

* The vaccine costs about $405 per woman/girl and is a three-injection process. [The vaccine is injected in a girl’s/woman’s arm at two months and six months after the initial injection. It is covered by private health plans, which, of course, is only helpful for women/girls with access to a private health plan.]

* There is some discussion of covering the vaccine through the Canadian health plan, and some suggest that there is not enough evidence that this vaccine is effective/necessary enough to justify the cost to the system. The women’s health network suggests that providing budgetary funding to ensure that all women receive regular Pap tests would be a much better use of funds. This is because cervical cancer is considered 90% preventable with screening and treatment through Pap smears. Also, the vaccine does not eliminate the need for Pap tests because it doesn’t prevent all strains of HPV and does not cure HPV if a woman is already infected at the time of injection.

* The HPV vaccine does not replace the need for safer sex techniques; a woman’s chances of contracting cervical cancer increase with multiple sex partners and earlier initiation of sex. Women who have sex with women are sometimes considered to be not at risk for HPV, but this is a false assumption.

* In Canada, the vaccine is recommended for girls 9-26, particularly for those who have not yet had skin to skin sexual contact, i.e., have not yet had the possibility of being exposed to HPV. [However, women who have had sexual contact can still opt for the vaccine]. There are fewer studies of the effects of the vaccine on the younger age category, so there is some concern about the effects on younger girls. There are also concerns that the long-term effects are not yet clear enough, particularly for young girls.

The above information, except for the square brackets […] which contain my own input, was collected and then paraphrased from the following source: The Canadian Women’s Health Network. “Gardasil: What you need to know about the HPV vaccine. Pap tests still the best tool in preventing cervical cancer.” by Women and Health Protection and the Canadian Women's Health Network, with assistance from Judy Norsigian, Alicia Priest, and Robin Barnett. http://www.cwhn.ca/resources/cwhn/hpv.html

A side of the debate that I’m particularly interested in is the ‘moral panic’ side. Some people are suggesting that providing the vaccine for girls as young as 9 in Canada (and the US recommends routine vaccination for girls at ages 11 and 12) would encourage promiscuity and give girls this age ‘permission’ to have sex at an early age and with multiple partners. However, Gardasil and health care providers recommending it don’t make a claim that the vaccine replaces safer-sex practices, and, to my knowledge, there is no evidence that vaccination is associated with girls’ decisions to become sexually active, to have multiple sex partners, or to discontinue use of safer-sex practices.

At a grad student conference that I attended last spring, a colleague raised the question that since the vaccine addresses HPV, which can cause, but is not the same as, cervical cancer, why is there not a similar initiative to provide routine vaccinations to boys as well, since boys can/do spread HPV? Certainly boys will not contract cervical cancer as a result of HPV, but is there a kind of policing/controlling of female bodies going on when boys are not held equally responsible for the spread of the virus? This follows a tradition of placing the burden of responsibility for birth control and safer-sex practices on women and girls, as well as a social attitude that women/girls can’t demand the same kind of conscientiousness about safe sex from their male partners that they are supposed/expected to have themselves.

There are so many sides to the debate: the issue of long-term effects/insufficient studies (although the vaccine has been approved); the cost of the vaccine and whether it should be paid for by the Canadian health plan when there is perhaps insufficient evidence that the vaccine is more effective in the prevention of cervical cancer – which effects few Canadian women fatally – than regular Pap screening is. This issue is inflamed by the fact that the vaccine does not replace Pap screening, and that, as it is, not all women even have access to regular Pap tests. However, I also find the suggestion a little questionable that, essentially, not enough women are dying to justify the allocation of federal funds (although certainly I understand the point that there are few health funds already, and that putting them toward Gardasil might not be the best way to spend what little we have). Further, while privately distributed, the cost of the vaccine is prohibitive for poor women who are more likely to die from cervical cancer. There are also the social and ‘moral’ concerns about female sexuality: from the Right that vaccination would increase sexual promiscuity among girls, and from the Left that vaccination represents more control of women’s/girl’s bodies. And certainly the debate is larger than these already tangled issues; the HPV vaccine is currently a contentious and complex debate. The decision to be vaccinated (or not) is a personal one to be made by individual girls/women in consultation with a trusted health-care provider.

Ellen's First Work In South Korea

2008-03-13T17:20:00.000-04:00

During my first week in South Korea I attended an orientation session on "how to teach conversational English and how to adapt to Korean culture". During one class the facilitator was showing us how to use a word search engine ... enter a word and words that are most often used with the first word will appear. For example, enter smile and whimsical, wry, happy etc. comes up. After some group work the facilitator said "I looked up woman and it's not the greatest corresponding words but look up here on the screen and you can see what came up", and he rattled off a few words. Turns out that menstruating was one of the words ... not surprising since a large part of the female population, especially those people commonly referred to as women, are menstruators. An outgoing, very loud young woman a few rows behind me said "ewww gross". EXCUSE ME??!! Not as loud as her but loud enough that others around me could hear I said "all women do it, why is it gross?!" Still in shock and still shaking my head I sarcastically said to my pair of female table mates "I'm menstruating - does that make me gross? Should i go to my room and stay there?" Saying that makes obvious how ridiculous the first woman's comment was. The funny/interesting/unfortunate thing is that probably more people had a reaction like hers rather than a reaction like mine. Sheesh. Cheers, E.

A MOTHER WHO DOESN’T WANT TO MOTHER -- GASP!

2008-02-23T13:35:00.000-05:00

I’m writing this blog entry on a flight between Toronto and Seoul and it’s in response to something I just read. My friend bought me some trashy magazines featuring the latest exploits of Hollywood stars for something to peruse when my brain went mush from too much sitting and not enough sleep ... a point in time somewhere between the 8th and 12th hour of the flight! Magazines like Star and In Touch are not my usual reading material - among other things I think these magazines are incredibly invasive of people’s lives - but I was very touched that my friend would send me off with a care package and so on route I decided to crack the covers of the magazines. Here’s my commentary about Britney Spears, motherhood and the social web we weave - the web that we make and that also makes us.

When I was walking through the airport terminal a magazine’s cover story caught my eye; supposedly Britney Spears doesn’t want her boys back. Low and behold Britney was also the cover story for the In Touch magazine my friend bought me. Word on the street is that Britney doesn’t want to have custody of her boys right now and has said that once she is well she doesn’t plan on fighting Kevin [her ex-husband and father of her boys] for custody. The magazine pretty much takes these statements and paints a demonizing image of her - HOW COULD SHE NOT WANT HER BOYS BACK??!!!!

The point of this blog is not to focus more attention on Britney Spears. I think she deserves a break from being trashed, evaluated, scrutinized etc. The reason I brought up Britney was because I wanted to use her story to illuminate a social phenomenon. Overall, in the current North American socio-political context it is expected that women want to become mothers; that they are unhappy and unfilled if they can’t or choose not to become mothers; that anyone who is a mother instinctually feels drawn to be a “good” mother; and that xy and z are what make a “good” mother. Women who don’t live up to the “good” mother standard or who don’t want to be mothers, or who are happy being the secondary rather than the primary caregiver of their child[ren] tend to be thought of as “off”, unwell, not normal or in Britney’s case, sick.

Britney may very well be sick but isn’t that all the more reason to be congratulating her for knowing her boundaries and that she is unable to be the primary caregiver for her boys instead of demonizing her for - heaven forbid - not wanting her boys back ... Which in the current social context is taken as meaning “I don’t care what happens to my boys” instead of “I am prepared to be the secondary caregiver. Or I am happy/happier being the secondary caregiver”.

I think “the Britney” situation points out just how much we still associate womanhood with mothering and mothering with selfless unending devotion. The fact that Britney supposedly doesn’t want her boys back is an easy way for the magazines to grab people’s attention. This is the case because news of any woman - any mother - not being fully committed to being a mother is newsworthy. Britney’s supposed “confession” has the power to shock us and it is in examining why her statement shocks us that we can learn more about the society we live in and assumptions about motherhood.

Cheers - e.

HONESTY OR SELF-CENSORSHIP: THE DILEMMA & THE DECISION

2008-02-19T14:55:00.000-05:00

I am about to embark on a rather large trip … next week I am going to be flying to South Korea to begin a year long teaching contract. Luckily I have a few friends over there already. Recently I was talking on the phone with one of my friend’s mom and she was giving me advice on what to pack based on what she’s heard from her daughter. [Bare with me, this is getting around to something relevant to the store!!]

In a bubbly, extrovert’s voice she said “you won’t need to take a wide variety of work clothes, the women tend to wear almost a uniform of black pants or black skirt and a suit jacket, day in and day out.” “That’s great news” I said. “I was getting concerned about my luggage limit … packing for four seasons, and both work and play is challenging! I figure I’ll try to pack my smaller suitcase with clothes and my larger with the other ‘life’ stuff, like toiletries etc.”. In her booming voice she responded “they don’t have the same brands so if you have a favourite brand of shampoo then you might want to take it but ‘Suzy’ has found a bunch decent brands there … ooooh but they supposedly do have some familiar brands for face cleansers and other facial products … “. She paused momentarily and her voice suddenly dropped in volume “you might want to stock up on your favourite brand of tampons or pads because I don’t know what they have over there. They might have similar products but I don’t know and ‘Suzy’ didn’t say …”. Her voice rose again and she continued on with some other comments.

As she had started talking about menstrual products a response jumped into my mind, “oh I don’t have to worry about buying menstrual products because I use a Keeper”. The sentence ran through my mind and yet for some reason I didn’t say anything. It ran through my mind again, the moment was still there to say something … yet I still didn’t say anything besides “umm hmm”. Most likely she wouldn’t have known what a Keeper was and yet I didn’t make use of the opportunity to teach her about reusable menstrual products. The opportunity was there to let her know how much I love my Keeper and how awesome it’s been that I haven’t had to worry about buying menstrual products for the past 3 ½ years. I didn’t say anything AND THEN … the moment was past. We were onto other topics and I quickly felt a swift kick in my butt … from myself. WHY HADN’T I SAID ANYTHING!? Argh. That question plagued me after I hung up. Slightly neurotic? Perhaps! J But the fact that I hadn’t corrected her bothered me and it took me a while to start to unravel why.

First of all, I’ll explain why it bothered me. It bothered me because I don’t think menstruation should be a taboo topic yet I treated it like one. If she had said “your eyes are orange and your hair is purple” I would have said “ummm actually my eyes are blue and my hair is dark brown.” If she had said “I saw a pair of size 4 pants on sale at Smart Set” I would have said “too bad, I wear a size 10.” Yet when she said “you might want to consider stocking up on tampons and pads” I didn’t say “oh I don’t use those, I use a Keeper”. Recently my oh-so-insightful brother said “Ellen you’re trying to ignore taboos and do away with them but at the same time you’re aware that there are taboos and that by ignoring them, you are breaking them”. I know I am not alone in experiencing this quandary.

In her book, The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo: Menstruation [1999] Karen Houppert [book available at the Red Tent Sisters!] writes:

I’ve become aware of the way I self-censor conversations about my work. When women ask me what I’m up to these days, I tell them I’m working on a book about menstruation and the culture of concealment surrounding it …. When men ask me the same question, I tell them that I’m writing a book. … Sometimes I catch myself – “How can you be writing a book about the hush surrounding menstruation and then perpetuate it?” – and make myself frankly describe the book. But the act requires conscious effort. [pages 240 -241]

Shortly after the phone call I told some friends about it. During our conversation two of my friends recounted recent “incidents” of their own that mirrored mine [interestingly all of our encounters were with individuals who were at least 20 years older than us]. All three of us are intelligent, well-spoken feminist educators who are passionate about issues of sexuality, gender, and women’s health, yet all three of us silenced ourselves through self-censorship. In my case, was I trying to avoid embarrassing my friend’s mom by talking about menstrual products in detail? Was I worried I would be embarrassed? Worried that perhaps she would think I was weird? Was I afraid that I would unleash a torrent of information about how horrid I think disposable menstrual products are, perhaps offending her in the process!!?

While I don’t have any firm answers I think that it has been useful to reflect on why my “lie of omission” occurred and why it bothered/bothers me so much. For example, simply by sharing my story with my friends new conversational terrain was opened up and I found out that I am not alone in self-censoring. Nor am I alone in feeling the regret it inspires and the sense of bewilderment why I/we would not speak up and out about issues important to me/us. Most of the time when I speak the space between thinking and speaking tends to be very small – sometimes this gets me in trouble! Ha ha. However, every once in a while, like in the scenario outlined above, I become conscious that my thoughts have hit a filter and I have to make a split second decision. Do I say what my initial and true response is, or do I alter it to make it more socially acceptable? Altering often takes the shape of omitting key details – details that I share loudly and proudly in other situations. Reflecting on incidents of self-censorship can be useful as it helps prepare me to be more true to myself, my priorities and my passions the next time a split second decision – honesty or censorship? – comes along.

Ok, “alternative-menstrual-products-discussion-opportunity” … where are ya? I’m ready and waiting!! E.

2008-02-01T17:39:00.001-05:00

MEDICALIZATION OF FERTILITY

In a recent edition of a women’s magazine I came across this advertisement. It immediately grabbed my attention because of the birth control pack at the top … here are a few of my thoughts.

My first reaction was that it both creates and responds to the current socio-political context in North America where women’s ability to reproduce has been medicalized. The pill pack represents attempts to medically control fertility and the supplement bottle represents the increasing medicalization of getting and being pregnant.

It is also an example of how intertwined the processes of medicalization and commercialization are; in other words the extent to which “health” has become something we achieve through commodities.

Lastly, the advertisement “works” because of the normalization of the birth control pill. [And let’s not forget that, although the ad features a generic birth control pill package, there are actually many, many types of birth control pills.] If only a few women were on the pill[s] then the advertisement would be a waste – it would be speaking to a very small target audience. Because a lot of females are on the pill[s] the advertisement speaks to a large audience. If women aren’t on the pill[s] themselves they probably know other females who are and as a result the ad is most likely interpreted as addressing the “normal” female population.

Interestingly the advertisement does hint at the fact that women who come off of the pill[s] may need some assistance to be “healthy” pregnant women. However, because the photo on the label features a woman with a baby the ad doesn’t address the fact that some [many?] women have difficulty conceiving or at least have difficulty regulating their menstrual cycles after they have been on the pill[s].

That’s all for now … E.

Birth Control Patches, Pills, and Alternatives

2008-01-22T14:32:00.000-05:00

The Globe & Mail's Article: Red Flag for Birth Control Patch

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080109.wlpatch09/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home

My first reaction to reading this article is let’s use the precautionary principle! I have concerns about the long term safety of using any hormonal contraceptive however, I realize that for many young women it is [or at least appears to be] the best option [of a series of bad options]. My concerns are reinforced by the article in which it’s written that “it's well known by the medical community that any hormone-based birth-control method can increase a woman's chances of blood clots, heart attack, stroke and other health problems”. What I learned from the article was that different types of hormonal birth control are cause for differing levels of concern. In fact “the FDA revealed in 2005 that the patch sold in the United States exposes women to 60 per cent more estrogen than birth-control pills do”. There is concern within the environmental cancer movement about the role elevated levels of estrogen plays in various forms of cancer.

Two sentences in particular jumped out at me when I read the article. First of all, the statement that “Janssen-Ortho issued a statement defending the safety of the patch, adding that all hormone-based contraceptive methods could cause health problems” made me cackle. Defending your product because all the products in your field [can] cause health problems is not the way to get my money! Secondly, a woman who got two blood clots in her lungs because of being on the patch said “‘if I had known [the potential risks], I would have had second thoughts,”’. The question is, would she have? We often know the potential risks of using pharmaceutical products [who hasn’t seen those ad’s with a list of potential side effects as long as the commercial itself, or the sheet from Shoppers Drug Mart about the 50 potential side effects of the drug prescribed] and perhaps like this woman said she would, we have second thoughts. Yet so often we plunge ahead anyway because while we don’t like the option presented to us we don’t see any other viable option.

Regarding the birth control patch or even the pill for that matter, we do have another option. This past Saturday I went to Amy’s introductory session about Fertility Awareness Methods [FAM]. Prior to the session “the Rhythm Method” was the only natural form of contraception I knew about and I really only vaguely knew about it; although I knew enough to know that it was considered to be not that reliable. On Saturday I learned about the difference between natural forms of contraception [including but not limited to retrospective methods like the Rhythm Method] and direct observation methods – of which the Justisse Method is one way to learn. While direct observation methods can be used for contraceptive or conception purposes I am not in the market for either; yet I am fascinated by the body literacy one learns through direct observation methods. Did you know that by becoming more intimate with one’s reproductive system and learning how to read its clues you can learn about food intolerances, vitamin deficiencies and overall health?! Whether you decide to rely on the Justisse approach exclusively or not, it is an amazing tool for learning how to work with your body. And regardless of where you are in your relationship with your reproductive system direct observation of your body [from a perspective of awe and respect] can only improve your health. As for helping myself along to my next stage of awareness I bough Justisse’s recently published [and inexpensive!] manual about coming off the pill – something I did long ago but the effects of which, I believe, are still felt by my body.

By Ellen Macro, Red Tent Sister Blogger

Women's Health Matters Forum ... Reflections on Sex Ed Materials, Healthy Bodies, Healthy Homes and a Healthy Earth

2008-01-22T12:20:00.000-05:00

This past Friday and Saturday the Women’s Health Matters Forum was held at the Toronto Convention Centre. Each year the conference has a different theme and this year’s theme was Linking Environmental Impacts and Women’s Health. The forum had over a hundred exhibitor booths, both retailers and health groups, which showcased a wide variety of health related information and products – although in my opinion the “healthiness” or health-related’ness of some of the products was questionable, especially in light of this year’s theme. Our dear Red Tent Sisters were there with a booth and they are supposedly “on target” for converting a large portion of the female population to Diva Cups and Lunapads! Ha ha J There were two small stages in the same huge room as the exhibitors and there were presentations going on all day in about six other rooms. The presentations were under three headings: health issues, environmental health issues and empowered choices. I went to two seminars on Friday, four on Saturday and spent some time wandering around the exhibit space. As you can probably tell, women’s health and specifically environmental impacts on [women’s] health is something I am uber-interested in and passionate about. Here are my reflections on my forum experience.

I dropped by the Janssen-Ortho [a pharmaceutical company that makes, markets and sells hormonal birth control options] table just to see what type of promotional materials they had. I will admit I went hoping I could find lots to critique!!. A gaggle of girls was swarming the table and were filling out questionnaires in order to be eligible to win a cell phone. The questionnaire was titled “what does balance mean to you”. So my cynical side kicks in and says “this is definitely a marketing tool and they are cashing in on the current buzzword balance – a very important concept which can very easily be co-opted”. They asked: ”What are the top 3 things you have to balance in your life? Do you feel like you have a balanced life? If you could have one more day in the week just for you, what would you do with it? In your mind what empowered female icon/celebrity has achieved balance in their life?”

The women at the booth were also handing out a booklet titled Birth Control Options: What You Need to Know. I’ll concede that to some extent it is a good thing that the company was there as a readily available source of information. However, a slightly deeper consideration of their presence and materials proves to be a bit disenchanting. First of all they are a company that sells pharmaceuticals and they were at the forum to sell their products not simply to be a benign educator. This is made obvious by the fact that their pamphlet focuses on birth control options not safe[r] sex – they’re there to sell products not simply to educate about sexual health. Secondly the image on the front of their pamphlet cover is a face – a white, young, stereotypically feminine, and normatively attractive girl’s face. The girl has thin sculpted eyebrows, is wearing a pink t-shirt [the background is mauve], and has long brown hair. Opening the front cover we find out from the introduction that the booklet is aimed at a heterosexual audience … but this isn’t made obvious. It says that if you are or are thinking about becoming sexually active here’s the information you need about birth control. This means that they are equating being sexually active with heterosexual intercourse. Sexually active does not mean masturbation, same sex activities or oral sex. I think a convincing argument can be made that the booklet is aimed at young women … it’s questionable whether it’s good because it provides information for an audience that needs it or whether it’s bad because it continues the assumption that adolescent girls are and should be considering intercourse, that heterosexuality is what is appropriate, normal and healthy, and that the white, middle-class aesthetic is the definition of beautiful.

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada had a very comprehensive handout on choosing a contraceptive that’s right for you. Their pamphlet was a bit better because it had several computer mice at the top, one in a condom, one had a rainbow painted across it, and the others were wearing an umbrella, a bra, a hat, and had piercings. My biggest problem with their handout is that oral contraception was listed first and natural family planning was listed last. The pill is said to be 99.7% effective when used perfectly and with typical use is 92% effective, whereas the symptom-thermal method is listed as 98% effective when used perfectly and the typical failure rate is 25%. I don’t like how pill is talked about only in terms of success rates and the natural method is talked about in terms of failure rate. It seems like it makes an uneven playing field that much more uneven. I guess it is a pretty good handout I didn’t like it because the pill is so normative right now that I feel like women need a lot of “evidence”, reasons and convincing to seriously consider other options – something the handout doesn’t do … but then again, that was not the intention of it.

Sidenote: I’m [overly?] critical of oral contraception right now because I don’t need contraception and therefore have the luxury of not having to make a decision about what I would use. That said, I was on the pill as an adolescent and won’t ever go on it again. I realize my current luxury and experience is not the situation of every other woman and so while I have concerns about oral contraceptives I also want to be accepting of the fact that other women have the right to make their own decisions for their bodies. I just don’t like that what is considered to be the “best” birth control option is one that I think/believe/know to be disruptive and unhealthy for women’s bodies.

On Friday I went to a session called Thinking Outside the Scale: Cultivating Healthy Attitudes about Weight, Eating and Body Image. I was really impressed by this presentation put on by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff [he has a blog http://www.bmimedical.blogspot.com/]. He discussed healthy weight, healthy eating, healthy body image and healthy tools and exposed myths all along the way. It wasn’t the typical “so and so exposes 10 diet myths” that you find in a lot of women’s magazines. Instead he focused on the fact that one should aim for their best weight – a weight that is dynamic, individualized, takes into consideration various things like genetics, medical problems, nurture, employment, children, fitness etc AND MOST IMPORTANTLY one’s best weight doesn’t involve forgetting that food can be celebratory and a comfort. His overarching message was that people need to be healthy BUT unless they like the way they’re eating they’re going to go back to their old ways. The key is to eat in the healthiest manner that is realistically possible and that is honestly enjoyed.

I also went to a session called Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic. Liz Armstrong was the speaker and is one of three authors of a book with the same name as the presentation. Basically Armstrong went over how and why cancer has been framed in the popular consciousness as something caused by individual lifestyle issues and why this perspective is problematic. She made a great argument for why we need to focus on preventing cancer by controlling and minimizing/stopping the use of toxins and carcinogens, instead of simply focusing on how to diagnosis and treat cancer. Both of the latter elements are important but they won’t actually solve the problem of cancer … yet they get the lion’s share of the available research money. Not only did Armstrong demonstrate how serious the situation is with regards to cancer, she also made it obvious that there are hundreds of ways to stop cancer before it starts. Here’s a top ten list she presented.

Top Ten Actions to Prevent Cancer

don’t smoke
eat healthy food [preferably local and organic] & take vitamin and mineral supplements [the quality of the food we eat has decreased – some nutritional components are actually missing from produce found in the grocery store]
regular exercise
change your cleaning products [don’t use anything with a scull and crossbones]
avoid plastics [here’s a handy reminder of the plastics that are especially bad … hold up your right hand … plastics #1 #2 are ok – put down your thumb and pointer finger – plastics #4 and #5 are ok – put down your ring finger and pinky - #3 – ha ha – and #6 and #7 are the worst. 5 is the only one you want to use on a regular basis for food and still don’t heat things up in it or put hot food into it]
walk cycle take the train buy a hybrid if you need a car … drive and fly less
avoid unnecessary radiation [raydon, xrays, MRIs, EMR from cell phones ie. use cell phones for short conversations]
choose healthy home furnishings
buy non-toxic stuff and way less of it
speak up and act out … be a multiplier!

Last but not least she reminded us that women have a huge opportunity to be instruments of social change because we make 80% of the world’s consumer purchases.

Another top 10 list came from the last session I went to on Saturday – it was called Towards a Healthier Home. Three people spoke about toxicity in the home – primarily regarding air quality. Did you know that a new vinyl shower curtain can elevate the air toxicity in a home for a month? Or that most of the time air quality inside is more polluted than what’s outside? And just think about everything we’ve been hearing recently about how polluted the air outside is!!. All three presenters spoke about the problems in homes and THEN spoke about the solutions. First Gord Cooke spoke about how homes themselves can be altered to actually improve air quality [in summary, don’t just circulate indoor air, open your windows and get “fresh” air in]. Then Andrea Kantelberg spoke about the things we put in homes to decorate them and how air quality can be improved by changing the ways we decorate walls [ie. paints and wallpapers], the furnishings we buy [ie. fabrics and fillers] and the type of flooring we have. Lastly Lisa Borden spoke about what we do in homes and things we can do differently to improve our health and the health of the earth. I liked her presentation the best because she made it clear that making change doesn’t have to be hard or time consuming or expensive. Check out her website for some great ideas and where to buy non-toxic products www.bordencom.com. Her daughter had massive health problems that doctors couldn’t solve via the “traditional” methods and so she became educated about de-toxifying her home environment … and now sharing this information is her line of work. Borden has a wealth of information and she made it clear that people are welcome to email her with questions about what they should buy and where they can get it … often I find this to be the trickiest part of making changes in my life. Here’s her top 10 list.

10 Steps to a Healthier Home

1. get rid of all dangerous cleaning chemicals

2. avoid all antibacterials, always

3. take your shoes off at your front door

4. be[a]ware of everything that smells - open your windows and don’t purchase products that offgas

5. use klean kanteens, not plastic, aluminum or disposables and drink lots of water

6. choose organic and choose local for good eats

7. light only beeswax candles with cotton wicks

8. spend time at www.cosmeticsdatabase.com and then become an avid label reader

9. buy houseplants, they grow you clean air

10. use soda for cleaning clothes and dryer balls in your dryer

Alright … that’s all for this time. Hope you enjoyed the avalanche of information!! E.

Written by Ellen Macro, Red Tent Sister Blogger

Evra Patch

2008-01-11T15:27:00.000-05:00

I was recently sent a link to a Globe and Mail article about two young Canadian women who have died from using the Evra birth control patch. Since it was first introduced in Canada in 2004, Health Canada has received 93 reports of adverse reactions from taking the medication. According to one study, women on the patch are twice as likely to suffer blood clots as those on the Pill, which has led many to wonder whether the product should be available at all.

Here's the link to the article - let us know what you think!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080109.wlpatch09/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home

Resident Blogger for Red Tent Sisters - Ellen Macro

2008-01-08T18:42:00.000-05:00

Since the Red Tent Sisters store has sex toys and we just finished the season in which “giving toys to all the girls and boys” is the mantra of the first world consumer culture I thought toys would be an appropriate topic for this blog entry! Additionally, perhaps some lucky adults got new toys over the holidays … for those who didn’t there’s no time like the present for a present!

Talking about things that are normally kept “private” [ie. are silenced by cultural taboos] is important - this includes but is not limited to sexual and reproductive topics. It’s important for women to talk about bodily things that are often only addressed in sex ed classes [if then!] or in mainstream magazines [if then!!] so that they get to know the real variation that exists between women.

Here’s a few questions for you to ponder [unfortunately or fortunately no answers providedJ ]

When was the last time you talked to your friends about your partner and/or who you’re attracted to?

When was the last time you talked with your friends about sex?

When was the last time you talked with your friends about masturbation?

Have you ever talked with your friends about masturbation?

Ever wondered why female masturbation is a lot more taboo than male masturbation?

Have you ever noticed that people are commonly thought to have a “sex life” only if/when they are sexually active with other people?

Is it possible to have a happy sex life of one?

Ellen Macro's Reflections on the Olympic Trials for Wrestling

2007-12-23T14:47:00.000-05:00

This entry is only tangentially related to women’s reproductive and sexual health. Here’s the explanation: I just finished university at the end of the summer. In school my main research interests were menstruation [specifically women’s experiences and menstrual product activism] and freestyle wrestling [especially women’s experiences with weight management for the sport]. Although they seem like disparate topics they can both be captured under the umbrella of women’s health and the politics of women’s bodies – I also participate[d] in both! Ha ha. Been menstruating since I was 13 and I was a wrestler for nine years until I “retired” in January 2007. Anyway, this weekend I attended the Olympic trials for wrestling. At the trials I had three “feminist” moments and I thought I would share them with you.

On the lapel of my black coat I have a black button that says, in white letters, this is what a feminist looks like [I ♥ my button!]. As I stood at the ticket table waiting for my friend to pay for her ticket one of the volunteers working the table [a male] said with a chuckle “that’s a pretty confrontational button”. I kind of smiled at him and in my typical fashion didn’t have a witty comment on the tip of my tongue. Luckily I was there waiting a few minutes longer and I had time to think of and say “it’s only confrontational if you think feminist is a confrontational word”. He didn’t really have anything to say to that. Do you? What would you have said to him? What do you think about my button?

Before the finals started, several awards were presented and speeches were made to honour the award recipients. While praising one award recipient’s commitment to the wrestling community a presenter said “[insert recipient’s name] made men men … and women women”. I appreciate the fact that he included women in the statement since women have been a part of the Canadian wrestling community for almost two decades. However, the juxtaposed statements made it clear to me the extent to which our culture has different connotations for the words men and women. It is clear how wrestling makes men men in the stereotypical sense, but it was so awkward to hear that wrestling, a combative sport, makes women women – the statement does not make sense according to what is normally associated with femininity. What is your response to the statement wrestling makes men, men and women, women?

Last but not least, during the finals past Olympians were seated along the right side of the mat. When there were lulls in the matches the male commentator would ask an Olympian to stand and give details about their career. Christine Nordhagen was the first athlete honoured and the only female sitting on the sideline. She has won six world championship gold medals, won countless other international tournaments and got fifth at the 2004 Athens Olympics [the first time women’s wrestling was in the Olympics]. The commentator said all this and then said “probably her greatest accomplishment is sitting there in her lap” … her 18 month old daughter was sitting in her lap. In some ways I can see where the commentator was coming from as I was recently told by one of my friends that she feels that having her son is her greatest accomplishment to date. However, from a perspective informed by feminism, women’s studies and sport sociology I take issue with the fact that while being honoured as an Olympian and World Championship medalist Christine’s baby was mentioned as her greatest accomplishment. I think the affront is most noticeable when you consider if a male athlete would ever be addressed in the same way and if such a comment would have been swallowed as easily and unnoticeably by the crowd. Am I overreacting? {How] Does this scenario illuminate the way society feels about women’s bodies?

That's all for now - your friendly feminist signing off.

Ellen Macro's Response to December's Book Club Title

2007-12-23T14:29:00.001-05:00

I read Kim's most recent posting - I'm gonna have to get that book! I saw it last time I was at the store and considered getting it. I wish I had checked out the book circle titles before tonight b/c I would have loved to have been a part of that discussion group. Menstruation is one of my "academic"/personal topic of interest and women's wrestling is the other. I'm really interested in how women experience the weight management aspect of the sport. Through my participation in the sport and interaction with other women in the sport I have come to realize that the normalized perspective about eating habits [some people have eating disorders and everyone else is "normal"/healthy] is problematic. I believe that eating behaviours exist on a continuum with individuals who have eating disorders on one end and the vast majority of women being along the mid-section of the continuum [ie. having disordered eating]. Kim mentioned wanting another term to describe the problematic relationship women have with food and their bodies. For a variety of eating behaviour terms which are less well known check out this website: http://www.nedic.ca/knowthefacts/definitions.shtml

December Book Club - "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters"

2007-12-19T17:05:00.001-05:00

On December 13, two women braved the bad weather to join me for a discussion on December’s book club title, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters by Courtney E. Martin. We started by discussing the subtitle of the work, “the frightening new normalcy of hating your body.” We all agreed that although eating disorders are not a new phenomenon, what is new is the normalization of eating disorders. It has become standard for women (and girls) to count each calorie she consumes and for food to be associated with guilt and shame. Martin writes, “we live in a time when getting an eating disorder, or having an obsession over weight at the very least, is a rite of passage for girls.” Although only two of us knew anyone with a diagnosed eating disorder, we could all think of friends and/or acquaintances that obsess over their weight. One of the unique aspects of Martin’s work is her attention to those who do not fit the medical definition of anorexic or bulimic but whose relationship to food is nevertheless unhealthy. As a group we discussed whether the definition of “eating disorder” should be broadened to include these women. Our concern was that by doing so, those with more severe eating disorders might not get the intense treatment they needed. However, we agreed that a term should be coined to reflect the widespread obsession with weight that is affecting the lives of so many women in the hopes that it would become viewed as a problem to be addressed, rather than a norm to be accepted.

The first few chapters of Martin’s book touched all of us; I was in tears by page six. Like the author, I have read a number of books on eating disorders but never felt that the authors were able to fully articulate my own experience or that of my friends and family. Discussions on eating disorders often focus on the influence of “the media” but Martin writes that this argument is “too simplified and unconvincing on a personal level.” In contrast, the idea of the “perfect girl, starving daughter” articulated by Martin resonated with all three of us. Rather than seeing body image as an identity unto itself, Martin describes eating disorders as part of a larger phenomenon of women struggling to “do it all.” Not only are we trying to do it all, we want it to look effortless and perfect. Each of us could relate to the desire to achieve in all areas of our life – and the disappointment that inevitably follows.

While we all know that there is no quick “solution” to this enormous problem, we had hoped for a more optimistic conclusion to Martin’s work. Where do we go from here? What can we do to help future generations develop a healthy attitude towards their bodies? How can we help them understand that they don’t have to be perfect, nor do they have to do it all? One of the themes throughout Martin’s work is competition between women – we look for ways to tear each other down rather than help each other up. This must be the first shift in our thinking, for, as Martin writes “there is no social change in isolation; there is only the power and the poison of the company you keep.”

Holiday "S&S" Party

2007-12-11T12:06:00.000-05:00

This past Friday night a fun time was had by all at the Red Tent Sisters - good food, good tunes and good prices! Wine, cheese and chocolate [mmmmm!] were compliments of “the sisters” J and Kim’s boyfriend was the resident DJ for the evening. Excitingly, from 8 pm to midnight all merchandise was 20% off. I was there from about 10:30 to midnight and there seemed to be a steady stream of customers mixin’ and mingling and buying a wide variety of products. Funny little anecdote, I was planning on buying a Diva Cup at the sale for my friend for Christmas. She ended up coming with me to the store and almost bought her own gift! Luckily I caught her prior to her trip to the cash register but as a result she knows what her gift is … ce la vie! At least I know it’s something she wants! And honestly … who wouldn’t want to find a Diva Cup in their stocking? Ha ha. Cheers.

- Ellen Macro

The Always Africa Campaign

2007-12-11T11:35:00.000-05:00

We recently received the following link regarding an initiative by P & G, makers of Always menstrual pads and Tampax tampons, to provide free menstrual products to young women in Sub-Saharan Africa as a means of reducing female absenteeism.

http://www.pginvestor.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=104574&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1076318&highlight

Ellen Macro, our resident blogger at Red Tent Sisters, shares the following reactions to the article:

I think it’s great that they’re going to be improving the sanitation facilities, providing nutritious feeding programs [using local, sustainable food sources?], and providing health support.
I don’t have a problem with education and hopefully increasing openness about women’s reproductive and sexual health but I do have concerns about mainstream menstrual product companies doing it! First of all I’m not so sure that the job they’ve done in North America has been so stellar that they should be the ones running the education programs in Africa. Secondly, they have a vested interest in maintaining a cultural ethos in which menstruation should be kept invisible. When women need to keep menstruation invisible they need products … P&G to the rescue!

My biggest concern is with the pad distribution initiative.

If only 1/10 girls miss school, what are the other 9/10 doing already?
Not only is P&G going to “help” the 1/10 girls but they are probably going to influence the other girls who already have sustainable methods of “managing” their menses.
P&G is going to make all/most girls reliant on imported products which cost money, drain resources, pollute the environment when produced and create a nightmare for disposal. There is a big enough problem dealing with the environmental and health issues caused by women in the first world using disposable menstrual products without women in the third world also becoming dependent on such products.

I also have a problem with P&G. Why have we made them the ones who are wealthy enough to put such a program in place?

Check out Beinggirl.com – P&G’s website which is so stereotypically feminine and continues to link females with consumption and appearance.
At the bottom of the article is written: “Three billion times a day, P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world. The company has one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands ….” This line almost makes me laugh out loud [a sarcastic cackle!!] because it was P&G that put out the Rely tampon. Here’s a quotation from The Curse – Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo by Karen Houppert (1999):

“Swasy (the author of Soap Opera: The Inside Story of Proter & Gamble) details a management paper trail indicating that Procter & Gamble executives knew that there were problems with Rely years before they put it on the market. According to Swasy, a 1975 internal memo disclosed that components of the tampon were known cancer-causing agents and that the product also altered the populations of the natural microorganisms and bateria found in the vagina. Though the company was receiving gas many as 177 consumer complaints a month about Rely, it simply dismissed them, telling salespeople to do the same. ‘If asked, the salespeople were given canned answers that denied any link between tampons and toxic shock’ Swasy reports. Though Proctor & Gamble is often lauded for voluntarily withdrawing Rely from the market in September of 1980, it seems clear that the company didn’t act until the FDA threatened to act for it. And the FDA didn’t act until women died.”

Mary Harrison, employee extraordinaire at Red Tent Sisters, shares similar concerns:

In general, of course I think that girls everywhere have a right to an education and that femaleness should in no way impact that right. However, in an increasingly privatized, globalized (which P&G seems to embrace, as they remark that they wish to empower American girls to be global citizens), it's a shame that so often it seems that these kinds of initiatives have 'no choice' but to be corporately sponsored, rather than being provided by governments as a basic human right. Although Always and Tampax ARE doing something great for some girls in these countries, is it also exploitative to promote this initiative as a way to sell Always and Tampax in North America? Imagine how this would be different if they went quietly about the business of helping and supporting young women without this press release. Further, to go to the standard international development critique, is P&G empowering girls and young women in these areas to develop sustainable living patterns which will remain in place and continue to be self-governed and functional when Proctor and Gamble eventually remove their corporate support? Or would this removal only cause further problems - i.e., is there a pattern of corporate dependency being set up? Along these lines, the HERO program states that it has sent American teen girls to African countries as ambassadors. Is this project approached with a reciprocal learning/empowering relationship in mind? And finally, P&G states that it employs 140 000 people in 80 countries. Does it provide jobs for people in these areas?

As one of the owners of Red Tent Sisters, I also have to play devil's advocate and share my own thoughts...

I have to challenge the whole question of it being a BAD thing that young women are missing some time from school during their menstruation. Our store is named after the concept of the Red Tent, popularized by Anita Diamant as a place and time where women are given permission AND GIVE THEMSELVES PERMISSION to retreat, rest, share wisdom and be present with their bodily experience of menstruation. Rather than promoting a world where women are expected to be emotionally, hormonally, and physically consistent, like their male counterparts, I would prefer a world in which women's cycles are honoured and respected. While I agree that education is a value and a right, I disagree with a system of education that demands homogeneity in behaviour and stifles the essence of what it is to be female. Just some food for thought...

Period: The End of Menstruation?

2007-12-08T15:04:00.001-05:00

This past Friday was the third screening of the Feminist Film Circle. About 18 people gathered in the back room of Red Tend Sisters to watch Giovanna Chesler’s film, Period: The End of Menstruation. On the homepage of redtentsisters.com there is a link to the Feminist Film Circle – click there for an overview of the film [and for upcoming films!!]. After the film people stayed for an hour to reflect on the film, the birth control pill and women’s health [a few individuals even dilly-dallied in the store until after 10 chatting about the film and making a few purchases!]. There was a good mix of “dialogers” and active listeners in attendance and I don’t think I would be wrong in saying that the evening was enjoyed by all! As was expressed by some grateful participants it was wonderful to be in an environment that was simultaneously respectful of a variety of [menstrual/health] choices made by women and also particularly focused on alternative, wholistic health perspectives. Overall the evening was one in which to learn and engage in thoughtful conversation, and I have faith that the educational opportunity will have a ripple effect – positively affecting the lives of those who attended and those whose lives intersect with the attendees!

The following is a [partial] list of “things” and people addressed in the movie and the discussion after, as well as points to ponder.

A major topic of discussion was the need for real informed consent before going on the birth control pill. While women learn about the pill from a variety of sources, mainstream info sources such as doctors, the public education system and the mainstream media do not often/ever educate about alternatives. One reason for this is the difficulties grassroots educational initiatives face when competing with large corporations. This is especially the case because:

· the current socio-political context creates and supports the quick fix, pop a pill, short sighted orientation towards health

· not all people have access to information about alternatives – alternative explanations of what is going on with their health and/or alternative solutions for their health concerns

· wholistic approaches often take resources such as time, energy and money, that people do not have – they also often require a paradigm shift that may not be supported by one’s personal context or society at large

Film circle participants recognized both the need for increased education about alternatives as well as the difficulties faced in getting this information and putting it into practice. While there may always be some women who need to be on the pill to reduce the pain they experience when menstruating, the participants seemed to agree that the number was less than those who are currently using the pill in this way. The consensus was that with truly informed consent the pill would have a different role in society, and in particular a different place in the lives of young women, than it does now.

Some participants expressed concern that today’s users of the pill are guinea pigs for pharmaceutical companies. We don’t know what the long term affects of taking the pill[s] is because the versions of the pill that are on the market right now have not been around for very long. The fact that a lot of the research done about pharmaceutical products such as the pill is funded by the companies themselves was also a cause for concern. The film also pointed out that birth control pills are becoming THE option for birth control, decreasing the knowledge base about other birth control options and making other options more of an afterthought than actual options. Consider this: why would a company promote diaphragms which are purchased once and can be used for many years when the same company can promote their version of the birth control pill which has to be purchased monthly? Not talked about in the movie but in a similar vein, why promote menstrual cups or reusable cloth pads when companies can market and sell disposable menstrual products which have to be bought time and again?

An f2m individual expressed his lack of internal tension over the fact that he’s a man who menstruates. Although he could up his dose of testosterone and suppress his menstruation he feels that since his organs were made to menstruate it is best to let them keep doing that. It appeared that any attempt on his part to justify/explain being a man who menstruates was done for others’ confusion and not his own. For him the combination just is and it makes sense. During the discussion after the film one individual wondered about the negative health implications of using hormones to transition and if there was a parallel between the problematic nature of using the pill [synthetic hormones] and using testosterone to transition. Another individual suggested that there’s a difference between “popping the pill” – a mostly unconscious use of hormones – and consciously using hormones to transition. In particular, emotional health is important and therefore using hormones to transition maybe/is just as important to shoring up someone’s health as it maybe/is to causing problems because transitioning may be crucial for someone’s emotional well-being.

Related to #2 is the double edged sword about reclaiming menstruation as an important part of being a woman. While a psychologist who was featured in the film stated that menstruation is central to being a woman this has problematic implications for men who menstruate and for women who don’t [individuals who are m2f or women who don’t menstruate for a variety of reasons such as menopause or hysterectomies].

Several women shared menstrual stories. A few of them had had painful periods and at the advice of their doctors had gone on the pill to deal with the pain. After several/many years they came off the pill for various reasons and desired a more natural approach to dealing with their menstrual pain and contraception. The result of opting out of using the pill? Increased body literacy, decreased pain and an awareness of the interconnectedness of their menstrual health, emotional well-being and taking care of their physical health [eating well, sleeping enough, being physically active, etc.]. In my opinion the stories were a demonstration of the importance of sharing menstrual experiences as such stories can act as a form of education. It also makes obvious that painful periods are not anomalies and perhaps this is something we as a society need to be dealing with proactively and in a different manner. [The Justisse Method is one such option which teaches women body literacy for contraception, conception and well-being.]

We learned from Zahra that during their cycle women experience four emotional and energy phases which mirror the phases of the moon; two phases of being extroverted and bubbly and light and two darker phases in which reflective energy is turned inward. Going with the flow of these phases honours one’s body and maximizes one’s abilities. A little promotional plug: check out Moon-Goddess Yoga in the Services – Fertility section of the Red Tent Sisters website.

Geneva Kachman and her artistry were featured during the film. Kachman uses her creativity to re-imagine the relationship between women, society and menstruation. Check out her Museum of the Menovulatory Lifetime at http://www.moltx.org/ and in particular take a peek at the information on Menstrual Monday – an annual day to celebrate menstruation [the Monday before mother’s day].

As one participant mentioned, menstrual blood is viewed uniquely. Think about this, if you cut your finger you would suck on it. If people saw you do this they wouldn’t recoil in horror. Compare social attitudes towards this type of blood and menstrual blood. Yet another example. Think about blood in action movies. Think about love scenes with intercourse. Now think about a menstrual sex scene. What would the audience response be to each of these movie scenes? What is your personal reaction?

Written by Ellen Macro, an honourary sister of the Red Tent Sisters.

Speeches from RTS Grand Opening Party

2007-10-13T11:29:00.001-04:00

As many of you know, the Grand Opening Party was a celebration of the community that built Red Tent Sisters. In an effort to share our gratitude with those who were unable to attend, we have posted our speeches below.

Kim's Speech:

When Amy and I were interviewed recently, we were asked to complete the sentence, “If I could be doing anything right now, I would be doing ________” Without pausing, Amy and I both answered “this.” It is strange to be so confident in our decision to open Red Tent Sisters, considering where we were last year . . .

This time last year, I was living in Amy and Jacob’s basement, and essentially had a job a week. There were the two days where I was a hostess at Sasssaz Fraz until I passed out from heat exhaustion (this was before it burned down) then I stood on the street asking for donations for the Canadian Cancer Society until a passer-by decided to spit on me, then I spent 6 months as a “fitness motivator” where I was forced to wake up before the sun and was consequently not very motivational, then I spent a few months as a teacher (without any qualifications) at an alternative school where the students were essentially the same age as me. Having had 18 jobs by the age of 23, many people (including myself) wondered if I would ever find a fulfilling career, or at least a career I could tolerate. And then there is Amy, who has so many interests, the idea of only pursing one seems unfathomable. This time last year, she was deciding between getting her masters, applying for journalism school, returning to her job at COTA, going back to Bridgepoint, finding another job entirely or home schooling her daughter. It’s really not surprising that many people had doubts that Red Tent Sisters would ever come to fruition. When Amy emailed me on Dec. 11 about a meeting to discuss our idea for Red Tent Sisters, part of me wondered whether this was just another one of our crazy ideas. But something felt different. I had been struggling throughout my undergrad to imagine what I was going to do with a degree in Women’s Studies and English. Sadly, the image of me as a Starbucks barrista seemed most probable. I assumed I would have a job in a rather unrelated field, and that I would fulfill my desire to help women on the side. I didn’t see how the two things could converge – how I could spend most of my time doing what I loved rather than trying to fit it into my spare time.

Another question that is frequently asked when we are interviewed is “what made you decide to create Red Tent Sisters?” On one hand this is the easiest and the hardest question to answer. It’s difficult because the answer seems obvious. What else would I do considering I asked my mother what a blow job was at the age of 8 and was surrounded by three older sisters who would discuss their sex lives at the dinner table, often to the horror of their partners. And then there was my love of books. I would often have read an entire novel by the time my parents got out of bed on Saturday morning and I recently noted that 70% of the boxes I have in storage contain books. There is no doubt that Amy and I inherited our father’s love of literature. While Amy and I grow up in a house where we felt comfortable discussing topics generally considered taboo, we were both aware that many people were not so fortunate. Our hope for Red Tent Sisters is that we create a space where women feel supported, safe and comfortable. Some women who visit us grew up as we did, but many women grew up feeling ashamed and disconnected from their body. There have been several instances in which women have been close to tears they are so moved by our vision; as one woman told Amy after reading that we offer post-abortion and miscarriage ceremonies, “you guys really get it.” Women’s lives are often compartmentalized but as our sister Emma so acutely sings “even you momma can wear stiletto boots. ” While many people at first seem surprised that we sell baby clothes and vibrators, they then realize it is not so strange; these products represent the multiplicity of women’s lives.

The response to Red Tent Sisters has been overwhelmingly positive. During the first few weeks, almost every person who came through the door welcomed us to the neighbourhood. Even the perpetually drunk patrons from the sleazy bar next door seem excited about our arrival. On a particularly windy day our sandwich board kept falling over and one of the guys sitting on the patio came in offering to fix it! Then there was the customer who had just finished baking a batch of muffins and insisted that Amy try one. We even had a pigeon fly into the store and hang out in the back room next to the vulva puppet. Whether female, male or bird, everyone seems to want to be a part of Red Tent Sisters.

We have been fortunate enough to have over six articles written on Red Tent Sisters. The Toronto Star wrote an article prior to Taste of the Danforth encouraging attendees to stop by our booth and purchase chocolate vaginas. It also managed to peak the interest of a woman living in Pickering who sent her husband in to purchase a “fun toy” for them to play with. Matt Brown wrote an article for Blog TO that began “A friend of mine . . . put it best: "how have you not visited Red Tent Sisters yet?" But it is the article in the local newspaper “etc. . . .news” that best captures the essence of Red Tent Sisters. Stephanie Hooker-McVeigh writes that with a “melange of services as diverse as women themselves, from baby signing to menopause and beyond – steeped in knowledge, wrought with passion, warmth and support – Red Tent Sisters is offering something that feels so natural it must be, well . . . natural.”

Amy will be speaking next and attempting to articulate our enormous gratitude to the community that built Red Tent Sisters, but I just want to take this opportunity to thank a person without whom none of this would be possible. This has been a difficult journey, and there were times I felt like giving up, but Amy’s belief in Red Tent Sisters, her belief in me, gave me the courage to believe this was possible.

Amy's Speech

Speech for Grand Opening

When Kim and I originally envisioned this party, one of the primary objectives we expected to accomplish was to officially and publicly thank the people who were instrumental in making Red Tent Sisters a reality. As the party drew nearer, we began to recognize the impossibility of this task, as you will too in a moment.

So, instead of calling people up here to thank them, I would like you to all indulge me for a moment in a little visualization exercise. Can we get the lights off please, and can we clear a small circle in the middle of the room?

I am now going to list off some of the ways in which Red Tent Sisters was supported to come to being. For every item I list, I will mention approximately how many people were involved in each aspect of support and I would like you to visualize a piece of wood – it can be a large log or a little twig – I leave that to your imaginary discretion – placed in the centre of the room.

To create our business plan, approximately a dozen friends, family and acquaintances assisted us by providing information about entrepreneurship, the various industries we would be working in, handing out market research surveys to clients and acquaintances, and providing editorial feedback about our document.

Two patient people spent many weeks helping us find a home for Red Tent Sisters.

When our bank loan was pulled out from under us and we were in financial crisis, half a dozen members of our immediate family came forward with financial loans ranging from $5 K to $ 40 K.

At that same time, another half dozen family members and close family friends came forward with financial gifts ranging from $50 to $15 000.

Over 100 men and women sent words of encouragement, love, support and solidarity that were priceless.

A single woman, with years of bank experience and genuine commitment to our vision, gave us a piece of advise that, combined with the priceless words of encouragement just mentioned, was the catalyst for us going back to the bank and eventually securing a $54 k loan.

When Red Tent Sisters had found its home here at 810 Danforth, another half dozen people contributed services in-kind to translating the vision of Red Tent Sisters into a reality by designing the space, the interior design, the logo and the marketing materials for Red Tent Sisters.

Two people contributed instrumental industry information to help us navigate the world of book publishing.

Two very special people created beautiful works of art for our new home which can be viewed in this room and in my office.

One woman helped us to keep all our finances in line so that we wouldn’t go bankrupt before even opening our doors.

The week before opening, another half dozen friends contributed over 25 hours of their time to mounting shelving, unpacking, pricing and labelling merchandise, vacuuming, cleaning floors, picking up marketing materials, designing our window display and putting up bathroom fixtures.

On the day of our grand opening, a close friend was kind enough to donate her time to baking us a Vagina cake, to help us celebrate the opening of our doors on what would otherwise have been a very quiet weekend.

The following week, one man spent virtually spent an entire week of his vacation solving our computer software, and hardware, problems.

The following weekend half a dozen friends donated their time to helping us man (or WOMAN) our booth at Taste of the Danforth. One friend in particular was exceptionally persuasive at getting people to buy chocolate vagina pops!

In the weeks that have followed, another half dozen family and friends have donated over 20 hours of their time to making door to door deliveries of our marketing material.

Two men, with whom Kim and I are intimately involved, provided hundreds of hugs, kisses, Kleenexes and words of trust, faith and belief over the past nine months.

This week, one man gave his time to helping us commemorate this occasion in song.

Today, a dozen people have contributed to providing food, wine, beverages, and entertainment.

Today, over 60 people have come to this party to help us celebrate the birth of Red Tent Sisters.

As you can clearly see, Red Tent Sisters is not here because of 2 people, or even because of 5 or 10. Kim and I lit the flame, but all of you truly built the fire.

Closing – Sing Along Led by Dad.

Red Tent Sisters Grand Opening Party

2007-09-11T16:39:00.001-04:00

Amy and I had a wonderful time on Saturday night - we hope you did too! Thank you for coming to celebrate with us. A special thanks to our performers: Emma Cook, Peggy Monchamp, Sam Melkic and Don Sedgwick. Below are a couple photos from the evening (more to come).

Unusual Customer

2007-08-30T16:43:00.000-04:00

I was typing away at my desk this afternoon when a pigeon decided that my computer was an excellent landing dock. He seemed very happy at Red Tent Sisters, so happy that he refused to leave! He just sat there, staring at me with his beady little eyes. I tried to shew him out the front door but he proceeded to fly into the back room and hang out beside our vulva puppet. After chasing him around the store several times (to the amusement of passersby) I finally managed to get him out. Just another day at Red Tent Sisters!

We Want Your Feedback!

2007-08-18T16:30:00.000-04:00

Things are going really well at Red Tent Sisters. As many of you know, Red Tent Sisters was featured in the Toronto Star on August 10 (you can read Judy Gerstel's article online at http://www.thestar.com/article/244848). As a result we had a great response at Taste of the Danforth, where we were selling chocolate vagina pops and nipple tattoos. You should have seen some of the expressions on people's faces!

Amy and I are expecting more shelves to arrive in the next week and we are going to need some new products to fill them up! So, if you know of a product that fits into the philosophy of Red Tent Sisters, we would love to hear about it. You can either post a "comment" on our blog or send me an email at kim@redtentsisters.com

We look forward to hearing your great ideas!

We're Open!!

2007-08-09T16:33:00.001-04:00

Hi All,

We are excited to report that we have been open for five days now and things are going well. Although we opened on the civic holiday weekend, and thing were really quiet, we have had many local residents browse the store and offer their words of welcome and encouragement. Here are some pics from our grand opening day. We hope you enjoy! We are also excited to report that Judy Gerstel, from the Toronto Star, has written an article about us that will be appearing tomorrow, just in time for Taste of the Danforth! We are so grateful to Judy for this invaluable promotion. We only hope that we can live up to all this hype we are creating!

APPROVED!!

2007-07-06T16:42:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends,

It's hard to believe it was only two weeks ago that Amy and I heard we had been
declined for a bank loan. Since then, we have been receiving emails daily with
words of support and encouragement. Many of you wrote that you were
"sending positive thoughts" our way. Thank you. It worked. I just
received a phone call from the bank manager at our branch letting us know that
he had resubmitted our application and we have been APPROVED!!!! It is because
of all of you that Amy and I had the courage to take a stand; to not back down.
We hope that our letter to the bank will help other female entrepreneurs in
their struggle to find financing. Not only have you helped make Red Tent
Sisters become a reality, but hopefully other businesses as well. There are no
words to express our gratitude but hopefully you know how much it means to us
to be surrounded by a community of women (and men who love women) who believe in
Amy and I, and who believe in the vision we have for Red Tent Sisters.

With love,

Amy and Kim

Party!!

2007-06-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

Hello Friends,

Thanks to the creative genius of our beautiful sister, Emma, we have decided to host a benefit concert and auction! We haven't worked out the details yet but if you know of anyone who would be willing to perform in support of Red Tent Sisters, we would love to hear from them. Also, we would welcome any donations to auction at the event. Most importantly, we will need people to attend so stay tuned for more details!

Thank you for your continued support. Each email we receive brings a smile (and sometimes a tear).

With love,
A&K

Thank you to the following for their support today:

Lisa Leger

Lynn Cockburn

Andria Siegler

Megan Lalonde

Briar Munro

Sarah Moodie

2007-06-20T15:39:00.000-04:00

For those of you who haven't seen our space yet, this is our store. In a week or less it will look a lot different when we get our signage up and our reno finished! Also, in addition to feeling optimistic from all the support we have received, we can't help being inspired by the escapades of my fearless and confident daughter...

Till tomorrow,

amy

2007-06-20T15:03:00.000-04:00

As we near the end of our first day following our mass e-mail, we would like to take the time to recognize those of you who have already offered support in the form of donations, loans, strategic ideas, in-kind services or simply an open empathetic heart:

Margaret Weller
Barry Cook
Alison Weller
Natalie Levman
Laura Werschler
Jacob Levman
Emma Cook
Sam Melkic
Jess Price
Jessica Densmore
Jenny Johnston
Don Sedgwick
Shaun Bradley
Rosi Levman
Bryan Levman
Lisa Mitchell
Kim Bathie
Amanda Rader
Mary Harrison
Peggy Harrison
Kosu Boudreau
Jane Davis-Munro
Suzanne Fahie
Bronwen Bradley

Kim and I feel bathed in love and hope, which is truly the best gift of all. Till tomorrow, A+K.

2007-06-20T13:55:00.000-04:00

The messages continue to pour in, offering support and inspiration. Yesterday, I felt like my worth was reduced to my finances (or lack thereof). I can't think of any other time when this has been the case. I have always surrounded myself with like-minded individuals: those who value vision, creativity and passion over financial success. I grew up in a community that taught me to dream (I thought that I could be an astronaut even though I almost failed grade ten science). Being told that we would have no problem getting a loan if we were opening a Starbucks or other reputable chain made me feel like I was being punished for being innovative - the very quality I had been taught to strive towards. When Red Tent Sisters opens its doors, it will serve as a reminder of the power of community support; a power strong enough to overcome the barriers placed in our way.

Wow, what a morning!

2007-06-20T13:26:00.000-04:00

Wow. What a morning. My first e-mail response was from someone I barely know but had decided to include on our e-mail list. Although the message was very warm, this woman politely expressed that she had no way of helping. My mind went into a panic with so many thoughts racing through my head – “why did I send this message to her?” “why did I send it at all” “everyone is going to hate me for asking for help” “everyone is going to judge me for needing help in the first place” “how could I be so delusional to believe my community could solve this problem for me?”

Then the positive responses started coming. Our mom said she could free up enough of her own line-of-credit to lend us a significant chunk of the money. A close friend offered to give us some money. A family friend confided that having worked in a bank in the past, she had a suggestion for how to leverage our way to getting the loan after all. It was suggested that I take this to the papers as this is an issue that affects many women attempting to reenter the workforce after periodic absences from the labour force to raise children. Then my Grannie called - she offered to loan us more money.

The responses just keep coming - beautiful, warm responses that make us believe this WILL happen. We feel so loved right now.