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LiisBeth Media has been a supporter of the women’s entrepreneur StrikeUP conference since the start. Why? Because we are both all about elevating the work of not only feminist founders but also women, queer, trans enterprise crafters everywhere.
Our assignment from the Strike Up team? Come up with a creative way of both honouring International Women’s Day 2023 and encapsulating the year’s event; Over 4000 women across Canada and around the world participated.
In the first year, 2021, we invited Katie Chappell, a graphic illustrator from the UK, to attend the event, summarize learnings in a graphic illustration, and also write about her experience. You can read about her takeaways here.
In 2022, we contracted Timaj Girard, a spoken word artist to attend and write plus perform a poem that captured the essence of the event for her. Her brilliant work can be found here.
In 2023, in response to women’s rights rollbacks around the world, we wanted to send a message: We are never going back. The medium? Music.
We started looking for someone who embodied feminism, entrepreneurial spirit and the term “powerhouse” and found her!
Kritty Uranowski is an established feminist, experimental music performer, band leader and multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter who has also works with well-known bands like U.S. Girls, and Queen of Swords. Uranowski works as a performance coach at Girls Rock Camp Toronto and Baby Pineapple Studio. Uranowski was also the producer of the 2018 Polaris Prize gala closing ceremony She currently leads Lavender Bruisers, an experimental music project.
Creating a song that celebrates the work and progress of women entrepreneurs was an opportunity Uranowski could not say no to.
Learn more about Uranowski in the video interview below.
pk mutch: Kritty, what was your first thought when we invited you to consider the gig?
pk mutch: The current Canadian federal government has invested over $6B in levelling the playing field for women entrepreneurs since 2018 via the Women’s Entrepreneurship Strategy. The goal? To unleash $160B in untapped GDP growth over the next five years. The recently released State of Women’s Entrepreneurship Report 2023 notes that the number of incorporated, women majority-owned enterprises has increased from approx. 15% to 18% in 2023. What has been the felt impact of this initiative in your life as a musician entrepreneur?
pk mutch: As a successful woman entrepreneur in a tough industry-music-What advice do you have for other women entrepreneurs especially those in the arts?
pk mutch: Thank you so very much Kritty!
Kritty: My pleasure.
pk mutch: Ok. Let’s listen to the final cut!
How to download a copy of the song? Visit Bandcamp. And follow Kritty’s feminist-punk experimental band here.
Need a break from sitting or the news? We thought you might. So we asked Sue Dunham (ey/em), a writer, musician, and activist who lives in the Midwest to pull together a 10 song playlist that will get you fired up, moving and by the end, hopeful no matter what happens.
International Women’s Day is over…but LiisBeth playlist curator, Aerin Fogel, founder of Venusfest, asks “Should it be? And why is it just one day?” This playlist reminds us that struggles to transform how we relate to each other takes decades.
This week, LiisBeth invited Urbanology, a Toronto-based lifestyle and music magazine, to curate a playlist for readers looking for a cure—and to discover new artists in the process. Enjoy!
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At this time of year, media becomes preoccupied with predictions for 2023. But why stop at 2023? Especially given economic (recession) and political (more unrest) forecasts for the year are especially gloomy.
Instead, why not imagine what the world could be like in 2060? At least that way, you can better discern what changes we need to fight for next year, or equally as important, how to derail those leading to frightening future outcomes.
Enter the art of the long view: science fiction (sci-fi), also known as “the literature of ideas.”
Sci-fi helps our shackled imaginaries pole vault over the present day so that we might inhabit both glorious and unthinkable emerging ecologies and alternative societies. Sci-fi literature provides us with insight into how emerging science, technology and our political actions today might impact our collective future.
Feminist sci-fi, in particular, works to explode the concept of gender and opens our minds to what a society without patriarchy, colonialism, racism and capitalism might look like.
Sci-fi stories are essentially like crystal balls made of words.
Not surprisingly in these times of tumult, sci-fi is a fast-growing genre across cultural industry categories (movies, books, games). Last year, book sales were $590M in the U.S. alone). It is also an increasingly diverse (though women still represent just 22% of all sci-fi writers) and global community of creators.
To get your imagination fired up, we invite you read the work of three Canadian feminist sci-fi writers. We also invited Ariel Kroon to provide some additional framing. Kroon is a recent PhD graduate of English Literature (University of Alberta). Her thesis work focused on crisis narratives found in Canadian post-apocalyptic science fiction 1948-1989. She is currently a research assistant with SpokenWeb, nonfiction co-editor at Solarpunk Magazine and co-host of the podcast Solarpunk Presents.
Is Canadian sci-fi distinct? Kroon says yes. “On the whole “Canadian sci-fi has historically been less focused on heroic protagonists or toxic power fantasies of violence, and more on helpers or passersby and their experience in that world.” Kroon adds “In my opinion, the best of the stories I studied were those that focused on how individuals relied on community to help build a better world going forward.”
These are some of those stories. Let’s dig in.
#1: DIARY IN THE AGE OF WATER by Nina Munteanu
Who should read this? Eco-feminists, AI enthusiasts, water activists, post-capitalists, eco-entrepreneurs, environmental policy geeks, science buffs, Maude Barlow.
Kroon’s comments (paraphrased): I am familiar with Nina Munteanu’s work as a sci-fi writer. I see her work as an evolution of classic ecofeminist thought in her acknowledgment of the ongoing struggle of Indigenous leaders (especially women and two-spirit folks) in protecting water, warning the world that water is life and there needs to be respect for water, and respect for women as water-keepers.
About the author and book: Bronze Medal winner of the 2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Science Fiction and a finalist for the International Book Awards in Science Fiction in 2021. Nina Munteanu’s chilling cli-fi novel follows four generations of women into a world nearly destroyed by the consequences of corporate greed, environmental desecration and the short-sightedness of humanity’s complacency towards capitalism. The book explores how the impact of climate change on biological life increasingly limits human existence and upends our social and political systems.
If you believe Canada’s water will remain free forever (or that it’s truly free now) Munteanu asks you to think again. Readers have called A Diary in the Age of Water “terrifying,” “engrossing,” and “literary.” We call it wisdom.
Read this Free Excerpt from the Book Here.
Action you can take: Sign up to defend our water.
#2: THE RAGE ROOM by Lisa de Nikolits
Who should read this? Feminist movement funders, people with unprocessed rage, humanists, politicos.
Kroon’s Comments: This book reminds me of the classic sci-fi premise from the late 1800/early 1900s where a time traveller arrives in a future society and the novel is a bit of a mystery/whodunit to figure out the traveller got there, and what to do about it. The theme of a feminist society or army was used in many 20th-century feminist SF as a device to explore what life would look like without patriarchal social discipline. What I like about Nikolits’s approach is that she updates how the trope is used and seems to have made her feminist army explicitly political.
About the book: In Lisa de Nikolits’s The Rage Room, family-man Sharps Barkleys–whose terrible mistake kills his entire family on Christmas Eve 2055–is given a rare opportunity: go back in time and undo the horrible thing he’s done.
As fans of time travel novels might expect, things don’t go quite as planned.
Instead of resetting his life to where he left off–with an alive family on Christmas Eve–his time travelling sets a series of events in motion which lead to murder and mayhem on a dystopian scale: In 2055 he returns home to a furious populous left to vent their boredom and discontent in prescribed visits to “rage rooms,” ruled by over by an artificial intelligence who manipulates both their lives and the planet, right down to weather-controlling satellites. As Barkley leaps back and forth through time in an increasingly desperate attempt to save his family and his world, he meets either someone who is a deadly enemy or an uncertain ally: the leader of the Eden Collective, a feminist army using the data gathered from rage rooms to analyze and predict the potential and actions needed to save the Earth–even, if necessary, at the expense of humankind itself.
If you like multi-layered plots, feminist power plays and extrapolating on the courage it takes to save the world from the effects of the digital age has on our lives–and ultimately, our humanity–then The Rage Room is for you.
Read this Free Excerpt from the Book Her
#3: EVERYTHING YOU DREAM IS REAL by Lisa Nikolits (2022)
Who should read this book: Edgy feminists, plastic surgeons, nefarious world leaders, anyone who read The Rage Room.
About the book: The fabulous, adventure-filled sequel to The Rage Room by “The Queen of Canadian Speculative Fiction,” Lisa de Nikolits, Everything You Dream is Real drops readers into 2066, eleven years after the world war of 2055 brought an end to the plastic-based, consumer-driven existence of the previous novel. Amidst food scarcity, spotty electricity and terrible drought, a group called “The Fountain of Youth,” has risen, a resource-rich compound whose utopian exterior belies a dark underbelly of drugs, kidnapping and sex trafficking. Searching for his stolen children, Sharps Barkley and some familiar allies square off against Alpha Plus, the power-hungry plastic surgeon–who also happens to be completely, utterly bonkers–behind the Fountain of Youth as he makes a play for his ultimate goal: global domination.
Everything You Dream is Real was listed as one of CBC’s books to look out for in 2022.
Action you can take: Support the Joy Smith Foundation.
#4: Seeds and Other Stories by Ursula Pflug
Who should read this book: Plant lovers, feminist futurists, hopeful pessimists.
Kroon’s Comments: The title “SEEDS” is evocative and hopeful. The title itself is reminiscent of Octavia Butler’s Earthseed novels. I want to read these stories!
About the book: In this bright new collection of darkly hopeful short stories by Ursula Pflug, seers, vagabonds, addicts and gardeners succeed– sometimes fail– at creating new kinds of community in a world on the edge of total environmental destruction.
Where do you plant a seed someone gave you in a dream? How do you build a world more free of trauma when it’s all you’ve ever known? Sometimes the seed you wake up holding in your hand is the seed of a new world. In 27 separate apocalypses tied together by the theme of seeds, Pflug’s characters explore the courage and resilience necessary to survive–and thrive–in the face of unthinkable odds with what Publishers Weekly calls a “striking juxtaposition of hyperrealism with delicate fantasy.”
Read this free excerpt from the book here.
Action you can take: Download this trauma resource list from CAMH (Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health).
That’s it for our list! If you enjoyed these reads, please let us know in the comment section below.
Publishers Note: This is a sponsored article. Inanna Publications is also offering 30% off until January 3! Visit Inanna.ca and at check out, type in the coupon code holiday22 to receive your 30% discount!
Inanna Publications and Education Inc. is celebrating 45 years in 2023 and is one of only a very few independent feminist presses remaining in Canada. Inanna is committed to publishing fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction by and about women. Its aim is to conserve a publishing space dedicated to feminist voices that provoke discussion, advance feminist thought, and speak to diverse lives of women. Inanna is a registered charity. You can donate here.
To purchase any of these books elsewhere, we recommend that you support your local bookstore, or buy from any one of these feminist bookstores that will ship anywhere:
Another Story Bookstore (Toronto)
Breaking patriarchal bonds, defying age-old norms, fighting social injustice… this activist, feminist and humanist takes centre stage yet again to raise awareness about violence against women.
A renowned Indigenous storyteller decolonizes early settler stories of “roughing it in the bush.”
Want to level up your knowledge of feminism? Good news! Feminist hangouts of the 1970s are making a comeback-with the help of crowdfunding and innovative business models.
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I’ve known Sarah Polley since she was a young activist. Over the years, I’ve watched her career as a film and TV writer and director with some pride. She helped me enormously by telling me about a concussion clinic in Pittsburg a few years ago, so I was aware that she had been unable to continue directing because of her concussion.
Polley has come back to directing with Women Talking, one of the most powerful films I have ever seen. Based on the extraordinary book by Miriam Toews, Women Talking is a powerful feminist film not only about women organizing to confront or escape male violence but also about the different ways trauma affects us and how to emerge from its grip. As the film begins we see this line “what follows is an act of female imagination.” I am struck by the fact that such a film could even be made within the Hollywood system.
The story, as you may know, is based on a true horror story of an extremely conservative patriarchal Mennonite colony in Bolivia where seven men were convicted of drugging and raping more than 100 women and girls in 2011. The film, as does the book, imagines the women are meeting in a barn to discuss whether to stay and fight, leave or do nothing in face of the realization that so many of them and their daughters have been sexually assaulted over night after being drugged. The men have left the colony to bail out the rapists. There is not much time to decide what to do.
I’m not a film critic but the acting, cinematography, writing and direction is all wonderful enough that a film that is literally about women talking held my interest for the entire runtime without pause. It is a profoundly feminist film for the obvious reason that trauma from sexual assault is central to many women’s lives and gendered violence affects many more. But more than that, we see a group of women who have not been taught to read or write as is the belief of their sect, who are basically slaves to the men in their community, who have taught their daughters to accept these conditions based on their religious beliefs are able to face the horror of what happened to them and then debate, discuss and sometimes fight about what to do.
Most of them believe that leaving the community will mean that they won’t go to heaven. Despite the extreme circumstances, the debate reflects many of the debates we have had about how to end violence against women. Some argue that it is up to the police and courts to punish these men, not up to the group. Others argue that whether or not the rapists are punished doesn’t solve the problem faced by the women, or even guarantee the protection of their children. Can they leave and create their own beloved community? If they stay and fight won’t they become like their assaulters taking their anger out in violence? Despite the extreme circumstance, the debate and discussion reminded me of some deep divisions I’ve been part of debating in the feminist movement and on the Left.
Collection of comedy clips from Anne Marie Scheffler shows (4 minutes)
Debates about violence and non-violence, whether to include men on a march, how to stand up to the Catholic Church on abortion, whether to defy the law. As sometimes the case in social movements, or in the decision of whether to become an activist, whatever they decide will profoundly change their lives. In the film we also experienced how different women are affected by their trauma in profoundly different ways from deeply angry to almost beatific. We also learn that it isn’t only the men who are responsible because mothers have taught their daughters to accept the conditions. And perhaps most extraordinary of all, Sarah respected the religious beliefs of the women.
In the Q and A after the film, Sarah talked about how the process of the film was also feminist. As the mother of three young children, she didn’t want the ten-hour days that are normal practice on a film so she organized it differently. There was a therapist on site to help actors and others deal with the psychological impact of the story. Instead of acting the usual role of the brilliant, domineering auteur writer-director, she encouraged her crew and the actors to contribute to how the film was being made, especially at crucial decisions.
Women Talking made me feel hope for the future. It is coming to a theatre near you in December. Please see it in the theatre. I’m sure it won’t have nearly the impact on your TV or computer.
Publishers Note: This article was originally published in rabble.ca on September 30th after it was screened at the Toronto Film Festival (TFF) 2022. We are grateful for the opportunity to republish this review for our audience! Thank you rabble.ca!
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Look, between the ongoing global pandemic, crushing defeat of Wade v. Roe and an escalating international conflict low-key threatening to go nuclear, we at LiisBeth know it’s been a tough year (or three) but rest and pleasure are an important part of resistance work. To lighten things up a little (and help you get your laugh on) we interviewed Anne Marie Scheffler, a long-time career actor, writer and producer, about her new, up-coming holiday show MILF and Cookies.
Q&A
LiisBeth: Let’s start with the facts. Who is Anne Marie Scheffler?
Scheffler: I was born in Toronto, Rexdale in fact. I’m a first generation Canadian. My parents are German and Polish. My father was a bank manager and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. I started getting paid as an actor at the age of 15. I went to the University of Toronto, got a degree in English, and was at the same time booking professional acting gigs while writing my university exams. From there I went to George Brown Theatre School for formal training. And TV. Oh boy, I wanted to marry TV. With TV you could talk to the world, and I really wanted to talk to the world. Not surprisingly, I’ve been in over fifty TV commercials and love being on TV.
LiisBeth: You’re an actor first and foremost. What led you to write and produce your own shows?
Scheffler: When I got my first agent in my 20s, she got me film and TV auditions. And I was thrilled! Until I saw the roles: rape victim. Go into the audition room and scream. Look, I did go into the audition room and scream. But I kinda didn’t want to get the booking. And another audition was “girl number 1” and I went in with “guy number 1” and we had to neck. That was the actual audition. No lines. So, I’m thinking, “maybe I need to write the roles I want to play.” And so I wrote funny monologues for myself. Honestly, I wrote my first play in grade 3 that our class put on in front of the whole school. I had always been writing for myself. Doing improv. Imagining the possibilities.
When you’re hungry and ambitious in your twenties, you want to act as much as possible. My fellow actor friends and I would do open mic nights, fundraisers, anything to see if our stuff worked. I had about five monologues in my back pocket that I wrote for myself and auditioned with. Artistic directors would be like: “That was great! Where did that come from?” And I’d say “I wrote it.” And that sometimes got me writing job offers which I never took because I was an actor!
In 1994, I had a spot in the Summerworks theatre festival in Toronto. Basically you pay for a spot to put on a show in a respected theatre festival. I had been doing clowning at the time, but my clown partner had left me, and all of a sudden, I didn’t have a show! The producer Benj Gallagher said to do a one woman show. I was like, “Hell, no!” but I was working at His Majesty’s Feast as a singing wench, and my fellow wench, Sarah Sked, said she’d be my director. I sewed my five funny monologues together and created my first solo show Situation: NORMA.
NOW magazine’s late, legendary and much-beloved theatre critic, Jon Kaplan, was at my show on opening night. He loved it so much that he sent a photographer to my house the next day. My picture appeared in the theatre section, with Kaplan’s glowing review in which he called me “a gem.” My career took off. I got a better agent, I worked even more in TV and film, and I wrote two more Norma shows: Watch…Norma’s Back and Leaving Norma.
I toured my Norma shows at fringe festivals in Canada and the US, selling out and getting rave reviews and honing my comedy chops on stage, really poking fun at what it was like to be (supposedly) following society’s norms. I make fun of myself in my comedy, spoofing the conditions I find myself in, to actually shine a light on the ridiculousness of the roles we play in order to be good.
In 2001, I went to a taping of Everybody Loves Raymond at The Warner Brothers studio in Burbank, and the penny dropped. At this point, I was doing TV roles, TV commercials, doing my own live shows, and here was a multicam sitcom. A marriage of theatre and TV. I fell in love with multicam. Soon after, my live comedy show Not Getting It long-time into a one-hour Comedy Now! special for CTV/ The Comedy Network by SFA Productions. A seven camera shoot. Of course, I’m still priming the pump for the seven season multicam series–or single camera, I’m flexible–but the path was unfolding.
Ironically, my old agent said to me: “I can see you being like the wife on Everybody Loves Raymond!” And I said “I’m Raymond!”
LiisBeth: What is your relationship to feminism? When did feminism come into your life?
Scheffler: In terms of feminist influences, I can start with my mother. She taught me unconditional love. She is a walking love machine. My mom is, literally, love
My father told me that to have my own money is to have my own freedom. That shaped me a lot. I didn’t think in terms of being a dependent, or a wife, I wanted to make my own money, make my own success, in the way that I wanted to.
That worldview was ingrained in me. It’s why I said no to demeaning roles. I wasn’t up for a career of playing victims. I lobbied with my actor’s union to influence producers to have more women roles that reflected whole, real women.
I knew how to write, and I took charge of my career and wrote and produced “myself.” As Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) told me in an article I wrote for the Alliance of Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) on women in the business: “Don’t wait for the phone to ring–call yourself.” Now that I am older and coming from a place that is so much more whole, I have moved way beyond the “pick me, pick me, pick me!” approach to my career to one where, basically, I pick myself.
LiisBeth: So as a woman actor making her way in a Harvey Weinstein world, how do you reconcile a highly sexualized approach to comedy and use of the term “MILF” in a world where sexualization of women in entertainment is seen by many as problematic?
Great question. So, as a comedian, it’s my job to mirror our shared experience as a society back at that society. I push the boundaries. I say what we are all thinking but I’m not afraid to say. To quote my comedy special: “I’ve achieved my goal! I’m fuckable! But now I’m offended by it!” Honestly, the comedy special is partly based on my experiences as an actor in really inappropriate situations with a producer. Which could have been victimizing, but instead I turned it into comedy gold.
Turning on your sexy and beautiful self shouldn’t be bad and unsafe. And if it feels bad or unsafe, I’m happy to shine the light of love and humour on it and expose it.
Collection of comedy clips from Anne Marie Scheffler shows (4 minutes)
As for MILF, I renamed and reclaimed a term that really offended (some people) but now has become less charged. Maybe soon you’ll be able to google ‘MILF’ and instead of porn, mostly comedy will come up. MILF and Cookies is sexy and hilarious.
LiisBeth: What’s next for Anne Marie?
Scheffler: Like other actors/producers such as Reese Witherspoon and Pamela Aldon, I’ve been a great artist, now I want to shift to be an equally great business person.
I’d like to turn my one woman show MILF Life Crisis into a limited series like Phoebe Waller-Bridge did with her show Fleabag, and create blockbuster comedy movies. I’ve written myself two comedic vehicles–The Bachelor Whisperer and Princess Candy Cane–and am looking for the right producing partners.
LiisBeth: Congratulations on an incredible journey as a woman in a tough industry! What advice do you have for others?
I remember being in my early 40s, and being a new mom with two little boys. I was juggling childcare to go to auditions, and lying in bed at night, thinking it’s very possible my life and my career are both over. And then I turned on the TV to a new show: 30 Rock. What? A new face? Tina Fey? A woman in her 40s? A mother? Who created a TV series she wrote and stars in herself? Again, the penny dropped. There was still hope. There is always hope. The only one who can limit you is you. Find your own voice and work it. There are a million different flowers in the garden. There is room for everyone. Decide what stories you want to tell, and then tell them really well.
LiisBeth: Speaking of stories, tell us about your upcoming holiday show, MILF and Cookies.
MILF and Cookies is Anne Marie 2.0. It’s our sexy, single lead from MILF Life Crisis, with a woman who now has decided to be comfortable as a single MILF. She owns her MILFdom but then finds herself spending Christmas eating pot cookies with her BFFs and examining all the men she’s loved, all the men she didn’t love, and the men she is about to love. People walk away feeling lighter. And stronger.
LiisBeth: Sounds a lot like you Anne Marie! Thank you for sharing your talent with the world.
MILF and Cookies plays December 15- 23rd at Toronto’s Comedy Bar Danforth’s main stage. Tickets available at comedybar.ca/shows/milf-and-cookies
Not in Toronto? You can catch Scheffler’s one-hour comedy special, Not Getting It, Monday December 19th on MTV2.
Publishers Note: Anne Marie Scheffler is a member of Fifth Wave Connect, a community of feminist women entrepreneurs who participate in the Fifth Wave Initiative, a year-round program offered by CFC Media Lab and its partners to support the growth and development of women self-identified feminist entrepreneurs in the digital media and commerce sector in southern Ontario. Fifth Wave sponsors a series of profiles highlighting their work. Fifth Wave Initiative is committed to a minimum of 50% participation per cohort by members of underrepresented groups. The Fifth Wave is a LiisBeth ally sponsor at the Lighthouse level. Fifth Wave
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On September 29th, the Gender Equality Coalition of Ontario is hosting its second one day, virtual and in-person “Intentional, Intersectional, Inclusion” conference at Fanshawe College in celebration of Gender Equality Week 2022.
But who founded this new organization? Why now? And what’s the difference between feminist organizations and gender equality organizations?
To find out, we spoke with Dr. Amanda Zavitz, the Coalition’s Leadership chair, small business owner, former small-town truck stop waitress, scholar, Marxist, labour activist, mother of two, conference lead and professor of sociology and women’s studies at Fanshawe College for over 20 years.
LiisBeth: Tell us about the coalition—how did it get started?
Zavitz: So the gender equality coalition is an Ontario registered nonprofit organization based in London, Ontario. Linda Davis and Danny Bartlett co-founded the organization in 2019 because while there are several women’s advancement groups in the area, there was no organization that fought for gender equality for all genders, including men. The coalition is funded in part by the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE). Any individual or organization can become a member. At present, coalition members include Champions of Change (London), Urban League (London) and Unicef (Western University).
I joined as Chair of the nine person (five women, four men) board in 2020. Coalition members believe that gender inequality, patriarchy, colonialism and white supremacy also negatively impacts men. In feminist spaces, we focus on women and talk a lot about the social construction of femininity being damaging, but we also think that the social construction of masculinity is equally damaging for men and boys. We believe this gap needs to be addressed.
LiisBeth: What does the gender equality coalition do that feminist organizations don’t already do?
Zavitz: I think that one of the things our coalition achieves is that it helps us move beyond the ill-informed, but still broadly held stereotype that feminism is anti-men. It invites a broader, intersectional conversation about gender and creates a space where we can talk about how its social construction impacts all genders. So by simply saying that we think that men are affected by gender inequality as well, we create a space where men, including queer and trans men feel as though they can be part of the feminist conversation and be heard. Since we’ve started, I’ve noticed it really does allow all people, men, women, gender, diverse to let their guard down and feel as though they can be part of a conversation about challenging gender constructs together.
LiisBeth: The idea of gender equality organizations, for many feminists, is problematic. Some feminists see it as watered-down, corporatized version of feminism (all genders matter) which detracts from the real and more dire, urgent work of ending the systemic oppression of women. Thoughts?
Zavitz: I don’t necessarily disagree, but we ultimately need to have gender equality for all in order to realize the ultimate feminist dream, or at least to move the feminist movement forward sustainably. I don’t see the two things as separate. So, I get what feminism is. I understand the importance of women-only, women-led spaces. Women will always be the torch bearers of the fight. I am an active participant in the feminist movement, but we need an evolved feminist movement that has gender equality for all at its roots.
If we look at where we are today, rollbacks included, we actually need to have a feminist movement that’s more inclusive of men. Not because men need help getting equality, but because men are also impacted by gender constructs in ways that allow them to justify their role in the perpetuating harms and prevents them from participating as informed allies in the feminist movement. The gender equality space can serve as an alternative gateway for men who are keen to learn more about feminism—and want to amplify its work.
LiisBeth: Men have always been part of, or served as allies in the feminist struggle. There were men supporting the suffragettes, men marching alongside women in the 1960’s and again in the women’s march of 2016. Allyship between male-led social justice organizations has always been there. And look where we still are.
Zavitz: That’s true. If we look today, we find some men still marching alongside a lot of women. At a recent protest against sexual assault at Western university where I work, men were included in the organizing. There were some men that were marching alongside a lot of women.
We are not saying men have not been allies or supportive of feminist work. But not enough of them have signed on to tip the scales. What’s different about our organization is we’re willing to understand the extent to which men, your average Dick and John, have also been impacted by systems of oppression and make this part of the feminist conversation. We know that today’s definition of masculinity remains toxic for men and boys. By creating a space where all genders can talk about this together, we believe we can mobilize higher levels of allyship.
There’s been so much debate about what feminism is and what feminism isn’t. For me, feminism is about ending inequality and all kinds of systemic oppressions. And if we really understand that, then we know we have to include men in not only the discussion, but also in the movement. I argue in class that the next wave of feminism should be a much more gender-diverse, collective movement; An inclusive, intersectional gender movement of both individuals and allied organizations that work together intentionally to dismantle power structures that are actually killing us all.
LiisBeth: Wow. OK. We hear you! Now tell us what you are most excited about regarding the upcoming conference.
Zavitz: Oh, so many things! But I will mention two.
First, our speaker lineup is incredible. Secondly, our activists-at-large program design feature.
On the speaker front, we have Jeff Perera, a well-known North American activist who talks about the construction of gender, helpful versus harmful ideas of manhood, race and masculinity, the importance of empathy-building and who calls on men to help end gender-based violence. We also welcome the incredible Dr. Raven Sinclair who will provide an indigenous perspective on gender equality, and Teneile Warren, playwright, community organization, plus intersectional equity educator, transformative justice practitioner specializing in anti-Black racism education who will talk about how gender was built on the foundation of racism.
The activist-at-large idea is a new exciting experiment! Here we invited well-known, and lesser-known feminist, anti-oppression activists and authors to participate in the conference, not as speakers but as people charged with the task of mingling with the attendees and participating in, versus leading, round table discussions. We want them to share their wisdom but also encourage connections that continue to develop well beyond the event. We believe that this is better done on the floor rather than mediated by the stage. Among those attending as activists in residence are Joseph Pazanno, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) professional, strategist, and attorney, Judy Rebick (socialist feminist, reproductive rights), Nora Loreto (feminist and union organizing) and Lori Fox (queer, working-class rights and anti-capitalism).
Oh! And we also have a terrific panel discussion focused on the future of feminism.
It’s going to be a great day!
LiisBeth: It sure sounds like it! And we will be there. Thank you for speaking with us Dr. Zavitz!
Publisher’s Note: This is a sponsored feature. Thank you to the Gender Equality Coalition of Ontario for its support of LiisBeth.com. You can still register for the event. Price is $25.00 for students or $75.00 for general admission.
An author argues that feminism needs coordinated leadership.
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How Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brands teach us that the prerequisite for success is white beauty.
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British filmmaker Amma Asante once said: “Don’t take no as a full stop, treat it like a comma.” Three women indie filmmakers (Bonnie Anderson, Moxie Productions; Rabiya Mansoor and Shreya Patel, Window Dreams Productions) are doing just that. These filmmakers aren’t asking for a seat at patriarchy’s table. They’re building a better one on their own.
Film has always been a brutal industry for everyone but women bear a disproportionate brunt of the pain. A 2021 report by Women in View found women were afforded significantly fewer film contracts than men by two major funders and far less funding. BIPOC women fared the worst. A story in World Economic Forum in March reported that while the MeToo movement uncovered gender power dynamics in Hollywood, inequities behind the scenes garnered less attention: fewer than 20% of directors and writers of the 250 highest-grossing U.S. movies were women (according to a recent study). It isn’t lack of education that holds women back – a 2018 report found equal representation of women in higher education in film and television.
Indie Film Making: The Road to Freedom?
While building one’s own company doesn’t make systemic oppression and challenges vanish, the autonomy that comes with going indie provides film makers with the freedom to produce content that matters to them, their way, and in ways that aligned with their feminist ideals. Moxie Productions’ Anderson recalled an incident where a male actor ignored her – even though she was director and producer, and looked to her male Director of Photography instead. She hasn’t hired him again. For the keepers though, she provides a work experience “I wasn’t finding in other places.” She loves hearing how working on her set is fun. “I want everybody to have that feeling when they’re on set because that’s when you get the best work done.”
For the co-CEOS at Window Dreams (below), going indie means you can put people and relationships first. “If there is no friendship, this doesn’t exist, and it’s not fun anymore,” Patel said.” “You don’t have to be lonely at the top.” The system pits marginalized creatives and producers (they are both of South Asian descent) against one another. There is often only one ‘diversity’ seat at the table. “Our mindset has always been, well, we’ll just build our own table or we’ll just make the table bigger,” Mansoor said. “There could be seats for everyone.”
Anderson took the leap into independent film making after years of industry experience that included lighting designer, theater director, playwright and actor. Technology has helped get hers and other women’s derrieres in seats. When cameras and lighting got smaller, and editing apps became available (“Film is really all created in the editing room”) she realized: “I’m tired of waiting for other people and I want to just create things for a living.” She learned how to edit through YouTube videos and appointments at Apple Genuis (“They were great”) to make her first film ‘GPS Love’: “A man falls in love with his new GPS and finds himself.”
Leveraging Technology, Global Networks and Diversity
Window Dreams has been busy during this pandemic. Learning to leverage new technology has helped. The Toronto-based Mansoor had wondered whether she would ever have the opportunity to be in a writers’ room with people from New York and Los Angeles. Then virtual meetings became the norm. Their documentary, ‘Unity’ (logline: “Love spreads faster than a virus”), had over 100 cast from almost 70 countries. While Patel slept, videos arrived from different time zones for her to edit when she woke up. ‘Unity’ was the closing film at the Unified Filmmakers-Munich International Film Festival last year. Their music video, ‘Freedom Dance,’ with Bollywood and other celebrities was directed virtually by Patel. It went viral and was reported in Rolling Stones India. “I’m retiring,” Patel joked. (She is obviously decades away from retirement!)
Anderson said that if she could change one thing to support the advancement of women, she would appoint more of them “To be head of where the money is.” The Women in View’s On Screen Report found women give other women more breaks. They refer, for example, to the ‘showrunner and producer effect’. When women occupy these positions, their teams have far greater representation of women in creative roles like writers, directors and cinematographers. When women of colour are the producers, the playing field for other women of colour is significantly more level.
A study done earlier this year, Building Inclusive Networks in the Film and Television Industry, found BIPOC women and non-binary individuals viewed networking events as vital to gaining industry access. Yet, most participants felt ‘unwelcome’ at industry events. Lack of diversity, micro-aggressions and cliquishness were some of the reasons cited. Participants felt greater inclusivity in networking opportunities would lead to positive outcomes: better programming for more accurate reflection of current reality; greater authenticity in the stories; fewer stereotypical or sexualized portrayals of women; on-screen reflection of the diversity of Canadians.
Even for Patel, with her expansive global network and a gift for networking and connecting – “That’s where my forte is when it comes to business” – access remains a challenge. Though there’s no lack of funding opportunities, finding them is a problem. Peers are generally tight-lipped for fear of competition. Mansoor and Patel feel funders need to promote these opportunities better, while supporting applicants to ensure strong submissions. They found out about the Bell Fund Slate Development Program late but hustled to submit their application. They got funding for several projects including the comedy series Layla is Relevant (which they also star in) about “A former child star and current nobody” who moves back to Sarnia (Patel’s hometown) with her single mom and gamer cousin.
No Money? Carry On!
Lack of funding never stopped these women from pushing ahead on their dream projects. Anderson had pursued funding before Moxie Productions without much success. She realized: “I’m going to create a production company and make money from it. And from that money, I’ll be able to create my own personal work that I want to do.” She has a thriving business in educational videos (For the purpose of training doctors and other professionals) and actor and musician promotional reels. This allows her to take financial risks that help other women like her improv partner Kate Ashby. “I Just thought Kate needed her own television show,” Anderson said. Talk with Kate Ashby was a talk show with a twist where prominent guests like actor Susan Coyne decided on the next guest (only revealed to Kate on camera). A new season of SNAK (four-minute lively interviews with celebrities like Sandra Shamas, Jean Yoon, Peter Mansbridge) is launching. “This is something that is dear to my heart and we celebrate Canadian talent,” Anderson said.
The women at Window Dreams pursue stories about social justice knowing their payday may be far off. Years ago, while Patel was doing humanitarian work in India, she watched helplessly as poor children were waiting to be treated for terminal illnesses. She knew documentary filmmaking could shine a light on marginalized people and create change. Window Dreams’ Girl Up about human trafficking in Canada took years to develop without funding. A feature film about domestic human trafficking is in the works.
Emerging Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Policies are Helping
There is reason for aspiring women indie filmmakers to be optimistic. Commitments to gender parity by publicly-funded organizations such as CBC, Canadian Media Fund, and the CRTC have increased the number of women directors in film and television. Mountains still need to be moved to increase representation of BIPOC women and all women in key industry roles like cinematography. However, women in film are increasingly leveraging the power of trust, connection and collective action. They are also helping each other out. They are helping each other out. Organizations such as Women in Film and Television (WIFT), Fem Script Lab, and Women in the Director’s Chair (WIDC) offer development and networking to support women’s advancement in the industry.
Anderson, Mansoor and Patel participated in the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab’s Fifth Wave Initiative, a development program that integrates intersectional feminist ideals with entrepreneurship. For Anderson it was “mind blowing” to be connected with women who were rooting for her success. The enthusiasm of mentors and others to make connections to help their business thrive was invaluable.
What’s their advice to help the next generation of women? Anderson would like everyone to see business differently. “It’s not sales; it’s building relationships.” Mansoor would tell them to have “The confidence to run with an idea, knowing there are wins and losses”. “Don’t give up,” Patel would advise. “Entrepreneurship is a long road.”
We can all help make that road a little smoother.
TIFF (September 8 – 18) has a category of films ‘Directed by Women’. These films deserve our support.
Publishers Note: The FitIn is a part of the Fifth Wave, a year-round program offered by CFC Media Lab and its partners to support the growth and development of women entrepreneurs in the digital media sector in southern Ontario. All enterprise founders in the Fifth Wave community are selected for both their potential and commitment toward weaving intersectional feminist ideals of equity and fairness into sustainable and scalable business growth strategies. Fifth Wave Initiative is committed to 30% participation by members of underrepresented groups. The Fifth Wave is a LiisBeth ally and content sponsor at the Lighthouse level. Applications for Cohort 5 are OPEN!
Meet three indie media mavericks who are challenging the patriarchal definition of journalism in Canada.
We analyzed five female-directed films at TIFF and explore the hidden lessons for feminist entrepreneurs.
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Farzana Doctor is driven by purpose. This sentiment, that comes from a place deep in her heart, has guided her throughout her adult life. From activism to entrepreneurship, feminism to writing poetry, purpose becomes her sherpa to climbing her Everests. This relentless pursuit to seek and see change is why we will see her on June 7th as the keynote speaker at the the Equal Future’s Network summit in Ottawa, on the evening of June 7th. She will be talking about one of the issues that has been gnawing at her and many women in her Dawoodi Bohra community – Female Genital mutilation (FGM).
WHY…
Is Doctor’s main goal to include this issue on the agenda as one connected to the whole gender-based violence?
“Generally, people think FGM is a weird thing happening in a weird country. They think it doesn’t affect them. They think it’s an issue happening over ‘there’. “It’s no different from the rape culture, sexual harassment, women earning less than men, forced sterilizations against indigenous women.” Farzana feels the need to put it in context and make women aware of how common it is. Female genital mutilation takes place in 92 countries, according to Doctor. White, Christian, American survivors are coming forward to talk about it. Until 1977, it was covered by health insurance in the US! She stresses that it’s a world-wide issue used to control sexuality. It’s about policing women and non-binary people’s bodies. “I feel there are white, Canadian Christians who’ve also suffered this. They just don’t talk about it.” She hopes that by helping women understand it this way, it will cease to be a foreign issue
WHEN…
Did she become a feminist?
“I was a feminist, probably in my teens.” She was raised in a very patriarchal family. Supported and encouraged, but there was unfairness. she knew as a young girl this was not OK. So she started getting involved, taking up her first job in a woman’s shelter at 18. She then began taking up cudgels against other issues… violence against women, anti-racism, LGBTQ rights.
HOW…
Does she give feminism a platform?
Feminism is embedded in her writing, which has always tackled issues of social justice. Her feminism is also part of her training. Doctor is a part time psychotherapist. “You’re in tune with people’s interiority…it’s easier to think of the emotional issues of the characters. It’s about observing people. Most writers are keen observers.” Her novels mirror this. 6 metres of pavement is a story of redemption that answers a crucial question: How do you get over the worst mistake of your life? She loves these kind of questions. In her novel Seven, where she tackles FGM, her protagonist Sharifa has no memory of what happened to her and therefore travels to India to find out. “I have encountered people with all 3 ways of remembering: People who remember zilch, people who have patchy memories and people who have a memory like a film this is based on reality. Then when it dawns on you, you look back and patch the pieces.”
WHAT…
Drives Doctor who is also an entrepreneur, to get the most out of her day?
She attributes it to meticulous structuring. Mornings are devoted to writing, afternoons and early evenings are reserved for treating clients. Above all, she relies on self-promotion. Even with a publisher, “You need to be everywhere, if you want to get your books read.”
Her determined efforts have led her to work hard at self-promotion. “I’m very DIY. What’s the point of just being published? People have to see something 5 or 8 times, get engaged, before they start reading.” She is aware there’s a lot of competition and that some good writers may end up having a smaller readership. They’re tentative about shining too bright. Not Farzana Doctor. She had CBC, CHCH and the Globe and Mail feature her all in one week!
“Authors have to figure out how to spread the word and have an impact.”
WHICH…
Folks does she rely on to help her publish?
Getting a publisher is still a struggle for her, despite having published 4 novels and one poetry collection. Even with the help of an agent, it took a year to get her poetry collection published. Next on the list is a self-help book. How does she straddle so many genres? She feels more confident and therefore finds it easier to branch out. She felt good stretching her writing to poetry but discovered it was a lot of hard work. Her collection You still look the same, written in her 40’s, is divided into 4 sections, each beginning with some psychotherapy homework and haiku.
WHERE…
Would she have got her material if she hadn’t suffered the angst of being brown, bullied and brow-beaten by a patriarchal society?
While what she went through gave her organic material, “I’ve seen enough injustice in Canada. So I would have still ended up writing”.
While FGM is an issue she’s been obsessive about, she thinks activism can make you burn out faster.
Maybe, one day, she’d put it aside and focus on someone else’s issues.
Right now, FGM is still mission unaccomplished.
WHO
Is Farzana Doctor? she is the Tkaronto-based author of 4 critically acclaimed novels. Her debut poetry collection – You still look the same (available on Amazon and indie bookstores) encapsulates her feisty forties. It has, unsurprisingly, received a lot of love. Farzana has been raising her voice against Female Genital Mutilation (FGMC) for seven years; even dedicating her book Seven to this explosive subject. She has also written on social work and diversity-related topics. All this, while being a part time psychotherapist.
Publisher’s Note: To hear Farzana Doctor speak about her book Seven, and her writing process, check out this episode of the THE FINE PRINT. Also check out Doctor’s review of Lauren McKeon’s book, No More Nice Girls here.
A feminist writer found a different way of sharing stories—and her own writing school.
Entrepreneurship support organizations are keen to profile their diversity and inclusion work–but are are policies and procedures keeping pace?
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Stacy Lee Kong had a revelation. The editor and publisher of Friday Things had just come through the Canadian Film Centre’s Fifth Wave Initiative, a feminist startup accelerator program dedicated to the growth and development of women-owned digital media enterprises. Lee Kong is a veteran of the legacy lifestyle media space, earning her chops with magazines like Chatelaine, Canadian Living and Flare.
Lee Kong is well-versed in how to do the editorial side of things. But in starting her own business, she wasn’t sure about how to do marketing and sales.
People – white people – in more established media outlets told her not to waste her time with an accelerator. But Lee Kong found it useful, both for what she learned and for the access to people who could help her.
After she wrapped Fifth Wave, Lee Kong said she was reflecting on the people who told her it was useless. Then she realized those people didn’t look like her, didn’t have her experience, come from a more privileged background.
And this was when she had the revelation.
“I was like, oh, you just know lawyers. You just know salespeople,” says Lee Kong. “You know who’s investing in community media and you can get a meeting with them. That’s why you think it’s useless.”
Anita Li is nodding her head vigorously as Lee Kong is speaking. Li started her new media outlet, The Green Line, after “feeling invalidated” by the legacy media outlets she worked for in Toronto.
Li grew up in Scarborough, the eastern part of Toronto, where visible minorities make up 73.4% of the population and 56.6% are foreign born. Her parents moved there from Hong Kong.
Growing up in a highly diverse part of Toronto, “I was keenly aware of the fact that the dominant media narratives were white,” Li notes, adding, “Growing up with that disconnect was a weird thing.”
Li left Toronto for New York in order to pursue journalism that focused more on equity and justice issues, as Canadian media rarely covered those topics, especially through a race lens. Li worked for large American digital media outlets including Mashable, then Complex Media. Li helped oversee coverage of the 2016 U.S. election (the election that Trump won) as Fusion’s justice editor.
What Li was learning while working with progressive, innovative outlets in the U.S., she realizes now, was a different way to do media than she had learned in college and her early work life in Canada. She learned about data and analytics, but also how to serve a community of readers. She brought this knowledge back to Canada, editing for a Vancouver indie media start up, The Discourse, before coming to the realization that journalism should do more than describe and analyze. For Li, journalism is about solving problems.
Anya-Milana Sulaver, publisher of long form, investigative journalism based Peeps Magazine, wanted a way to look deeper at problems – at the ground level, with people embedded in communities. She, too, felt like she wasn’t allowed to do real, anthropological investigations in the Canadian media ecosystem.
Sulaver is the daughter of a Serbian immigrant father and a mother who looked down upon her father’s ‘peasant’ roots. She found her mother’s view more dominant when she was first working in media in the 1990s when the war in the former Yugoslavia broke out. Sulaver wanted to tell stories from the perspective of the people on the ground, people she knew from childhood summers. She was told Canadians would not be interested.
So she went back to school. A lot. And came out with multiple degrees and an understanding of how media works and how academics work. In her start-up magazine, Peeps, she is fusing the two.
Lee Kong, Li and Sulaver all met at the Fifth Wave Initiative. They are all doing journalism that some in Canadian legacy media – even those who are focused on helping budding female entrepreneurs – don’t consider journalism. All three agree that they don’t care. They would rather move journalism into new forms than fit into the old ones – the old ones that either don’t include them or innovate fast enough.
The Power of Pop Culture
“I think there are a lot of dismissive attitudes towards pop culture and its importance,” says Lee Kong, encapsulating the challenges of reporting serious journalism through the lens of culture.
That’s what Lee Kong does. Every Friday, her newsletter delivers incisive takes on what is happening in check-out line magazines, and how they are more important to our lives than we think.
“If millions of people are paying attention to [pop culture] then it really behooves those of us who are trying to make sense of the world to pay attention to the same things,” Lee Kong says.
“People coming to news outlets are not just looking at what happened, but why they should care.”
Lee Kong has a gift for writing about the real issues beneath the celebrity veneer. She recently wrote about how western media outlets are positioning the invasion of Ukraine like a TV drama, about how people writing in prestigious newspapers and magazines are complaining their voices are stifled, and about how entertainment media is ignoring the abusive nature of Kanye West’s treatment of his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian.
The Kardashian story, says Lee Kong, is not a celebrity story. It’s a domestic violence story.
“I’m only talking about them ‘cause you know their names,” Lee Kong says in a Zoom interview. “They’re the clever trick. I really want us to think about the issues that these stories bring up.”
Lee Kong started Friday Things when she was passed over for an editor-in-chief job for a magazine for which she was working. She had worked up the ranks and was acting as the de-facto editor in chief after a few people had left.
“Everyone seemed to think I would get that job, and I didn’t get the job. I had a team of people I had been leading for months at that point.”
This sent her on a path of self-reflection about what women – and specifically women who are, like her, ‘An ethnically ambiguous person of color’ with roots in the Caribbean – can and should expect from a journalism industry that centres a point of view that doesn’t include hers.
“If you wanted to drill down and say, ‘I want to know how many of our readers are racialized,’ then you would be told it would be racist to gather that information, so there would always be plausible deniability.”
Moving Toward Solutions
Li also wants to know who her readers are, which is why she’s including them in her journalism. She will not only be talking to them, but asking them to analyze problems and crowd-source solutions.
The Green Line will cover one long form feature or investigative story per week – starting in April – about a systemic problem facing Toronto, focusing on Gen Zs, Millennials and other under-represented communities
Their ‘Action Journey’ will start with an explainer breaking down the systemic problem they’re reporting on. The next week, they’ll post a long-form, interactive feature that reports local solutions to the problem. In week three, they’ll host a live town-hall event to crowd-source more solutions. And in week four, they’ll unpack those solutions with another written piece. You can follow all this on a website that takes you on a visual journey through the stories.
On social, The Green Line will engage people with humor, which is why the main people Li has on her team are a comedian, an audience engagement manager, and a social media manager.
Li is clear that she and her team are not activists. They’re journalists, bringing people together and reporting on possible solutions.
“I believe in vetting all sources, reporting widely and fact checking,” she says. She is not, though, going to give space to something – like climate change denial – which is not true. She wants to solve problems, not drive clicks, using ‘values driven editorial framework’.
Re-defining journalism
Sulaver is not going to hire a comedian to sell Peeps. She does, however, teach anthropologists how to write for a wider audience than their academic peers.
The anthropologists Peeps works with are in communities writing about specific topics or people. They are doing this through their universities, but Sulaver knew their stories often were lost in academic journals. She also knew that the people telling these intricate stories would not want to work with publishers who did not understand the research.
The stories in Peeps can take up six months to tell. There’s the anthropologists’ first take, then there is the editing process that focuses their writing without losing the complexity. Sulaver said it can take up to five rewrites before a story is ready.
There’s also photography. Sulaver hires some of the best photographers in the world – and pays them well – to highlight the communities the writers are covering. Sometimes, she has found, the photographers who come from these communities don’t agree with the premise of the piece, or find differences when they interview people they photograph. With Peeps, Sulaver makes room for these disagreements, because they are part of the story, part of the search for truth.
The storytelling in Peeps resonates. First, the site is gorgeous. Sulaver is as intent on curating the pictures as she is making sure the writing is authentic. She also gets her writers to tell specific stories that have larger reverberations.
All three women want to make a difference in their worlds, and a difference in journalism. They are pushing against ways of thinking that say the stories they tell aren’t important, and their ways of telling them aren’t ‘correct’. Lee Kong, Li and Sulaver want to tell stories about people who don’t see themselves in the headlines, and who often aren’t deemed ‘newsworthy’.
They may just be changing the definition of journalism in the process.
Publishers Note: Peeps, The Green Line and Friday Things are part of the Fifth Wave Initiative, a year-round program offered by CFC Media Lab and its partners to support the growth and development of women entrepreneurs in the digital media sector in southern Ontario. All enterprise founders in the Fifth Wave community are selected for both their potential and commitment toward weaving intersectional feminist ideals of equity and fairness into sustainable and scalable business growth strategies. Fifth Wave Initiative is committed to minimum of 50% participation per cohort by members of underrepresented groups. The Fifth Wave is a LiisBeth ally sponsor at the Lighthouse level. Applications for Cohort 5 are open. Apply here
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The Joy of Sin
Reverend Dr. Cheri DiNovo C.M. was the guest on the November episode of The Fine Print – an online conversation series with contemporary feminist authors. Hearing DiNovo speak truth to power ended the 2021 season on a note of hope, joy and resilience.
“We’re all joyously fallible, traumatized, wanting humans,” writes DiNovo in the epilogue of her compelling memoir, The Queer Evangelist. “If we are loved by anyone and love anyone, our lives include holiness,” said the former politician turned radical reverend. ‘The joy of sin’ is how she prefers to reference the mantra ‘progress not perfection’.
DiNovo understands progress. During her tenure representing Parkdale-High Park in the Legislative Assembly on Ontario she passed into law more pro-LGBTQ2+ legislation than anyone in Canadian history, including Toby’s Act which added trans rights to the Ontario Human Rights Code in 2012, the Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Act which banned conversion therapy for LGBTQ2+ youth in 2015, Cy and Ruby’s Act which established parent equality for LGBTQ2+ parents in 2015, and the Trans Day of Remembrance Act in 2017.
“I hope this book can be seen as something of a manual for how, in spite of our ‘messiness’, we can be change agents.”
The memoir is a brutally honest tale of how a queer teen who was addicted to meth and left home at the age of fifteen went on to get elected to provincial office, change laws and save lives.
From her lived experiences activism and politics, DiNovo learned that reform and revolution aren’t contradictory. We’re living in a time when reforms are happening all around us. Anti-Black racism, reaction to the climate crisis, Indigenous rail blockades, to name only a few. Revolution, on the other hand, is a loftier goal. And it’s unlikely the reforms we’re seeing today—critical as they are—will upend capitalism and displace a system that is designed for people, not profit. But DiNovo will take what she can get. “Like the tale on one woman’s life, reforms are not nothing. Reforms are crucial. Reforms change lives as they are lived now, not in some utopian future,” she writes.
Working with the Enemy
The Queer Evangelist includes the full text of a sermon DiNovo gave when she first started at Trinity St-Paul’s. The text is based on the Beatitudes and aims to shed light on the ‘hate your enemies’ mindset. She also used the sermon to help explain her move out of politics and to help those who find church as a whole, incomprehensible.
“But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you,” DiNovo preached.
Impossible, right?
“If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6: 27-31)
Who does this?
Those with nothing left to lose.
“If we’re going to have differences of opinion and ideological debate in our governments, then we better learn to work with somebody who doesn’t always agree with us,” said DiNovo. “And so I did. And that’s how I got a lot done.”
She learned to respect people who had integrity and principles, no matter their political persuasion. She sought out people she could work with from the other parties and got most of the bills passed as tri-party bills. Eventually she became known as the tri-party bill queen. Further testament to befriending the enemy is the fact that Kathleen Wynne wrote the foreward to the book. After one of the worst smear campaigns that was hurtful and attacked her past and her family, the former Liberal Premier wrote: “Cheri’s telling of the story of that campaign is chilling for me to read as it lays bare the worst of the political process—a personal smear campaign. It was my party that would have supported, if not initiated, the campaign. But more than that, as an openly lesbian candidate, I have lived through my own personal smear campaigns. They are exhausting. They damage families ad they damage democracy.”
Just Do the Impossible
In our time of ongoing uncertainty about our environmental future and political divide, DiNovo uses the phrase ‘Do the impossible’ as a guiding principle in her life and work. She was inspired by this piece: graffiti is from Paris, France in the late 1960s when students protested the closure of the Sorbonne.
The idea resonated strongly enough that she used it as the title of the book’s epilogue: Just Do the Impossible.
Because if you’ve got nothing to lose, why wouldn’t you do the impossible? Or at least give it a try.
The Queer Evangelist is DiNovo’s second book. It was shortlisted for the Speaker’s Book Award, Legislative Assembly of Ontario 2021.
She was the featured guest in November 2021, on The Fine Print, a conversation series with contemporary feminist authors hosted and produced by Lana Pesch in the Feminist Enterprise Commons (FEC). Watch the video highlights of the conversation here on YouTube.
Feminist parties are making a comeback in Europe. But why? New LiisBeth contributor Annika Anderson flew to Sweden to find out.
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Sadly, what happened to Hepburn in this instance is not unusual. Women’s contributions are all too often “accidently” erased from history.
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Women artists have been denied equal access to opportunities in the art market for too long. But there is a new wave of feminist art-preneurs, who are making sure women are smack dab in the middle of the canvas of possibilities. Here are four examples of women in the art market who are adapting to an ever-evolving business environment. Meet: The Techie, The Curator, The Art-preneur and The Collective.
The Techie
“Nobody does what I do,” says Candice Houtekier, 29, from her home in Toronto. She runs Art Collision, the only marketing agency in Canada focused on the fine art market using emerging technologies. After working at various commercial art galleries in Montreal and Toronto while a graduate student in Art History and Video Games at the University of Montreal, Houtekier quickly realized she didn’t excel at sales but had a gift for improving galleries’ presence in the market place through web design and social media. She remembers thinking: “Whoa, maybe I am more tech savvy than average.”
Houtekier turned that realization into a business. She launched Art Collision in 2019 to help art dealers, artists and art consultants build more and better connections. “My marketing agency has a real focus on new technologies like virtual reality (VR) experiences but also blockchain solutions,” the feminist entrepreneur said.
From Houtekier’s experience, established gallery owners are stuck in the status quo. They work their strong contact lists, meet collectors face-to-face and make a sale. “These people are really resistant to learn about the importance of having more females in their business, representing an equal number of male and female artists, representing artists of colour,” she said. “And they are very against new technology.”
Houtekier is helping to change the way the art world operates. She works with a new breed of gallerists who are ready to shake things up. “If they represent emerging artists, they’re going to try to have 50 percent women and 50 percent of men; they are going to try to represent more artists of colour,” she said.
Houtekier says Millennials and GenX consume differently than older collectors. “They act fast, they like to see prices, they like to have concurrent info about the artwork,” she said. “When you start to embrace new tools, new technology and you make the inventory more accessible, you start to see interest from this new generation.” To that end, beyond the obvious tools like well-designed websites and social media platforms, Houtekier creates virtual reality hubs where artists and art dealers can curate exhibitions and host live events. She is a co-director in Art Gate that offers these VR solutions.
Houtekier also helps clients navigate the new world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a unique piece of digital art that lives on a blockchain. If you Google ‘NFT and art’ you’ll find the story that made headlines around the world in 2020. Beeple’s compilation of digital images—Everydays: The first 5000 Days—minted as an NFT, fetched over $69 million US at auction-house Christie’s in March, 2021. While some women have had decent paydays for the sale of their NFTs, like Itzal Yard for Dreaming at Dusk (sold for 500 Ethereum, about $1.7 million US), women risk being left behind in this new art space. But Houtekier is helping her clients understand blockchain technology and how to accept crypto payment. While she can’t predict how NFTs will play out fully, Houtekier is convinced “It’s a flourishing business for the future of the art market.”
The Curator
The new breed of gallerists includes Toronto’s Miriam Arbus, founder of Sky Fine Foods (SFF) and Ottawa’s Carrie Colton, founder of Studio Sixty-Six. The two curators are making sure women and people of colour are not left behind—but placed smack dab in the middle of the canvas of the art market.
Arbus, 34, launched her virtual gallery at the start of the pandemic. The name ‘Sky Fine Foods’ was the name of a defunct corner store near her home that she thought would make a cool gallery one day. But SFF is 100 percent online where collectors view the art in virtual interactive environments. As reported in The Art Market 2021 there was a stratospheric rise in online art sales in the past year. The majority of buyers lived more than 1000 kilometres away from where they purchased a piece of art and had never stepped foot inside the gallery or met the dealer.
“Having this really flexible digital virtual presence where I’m not restricted at all because of physicality, I feel I can be really open to artists from all over,” she said. Arbus has attracted digital artists from around the world. Twelve of her fifteen artists are women. “In the digital art sphere that I hang out in, most people are vehemently fighting for equal access and raising up voices that have been put down, I think there’s really a strong generation of artists who want to make space and want to lift each other up.”
Arbus says her values of social justice and feminism are inextricably connected. For instance, twenty per cent of all SFF’s sales support Black Women in Motion and Black Artists’ Network in Dialogue (BAND) Gallery & Cultural Centre. Her values are also reflected in the focus of her artists’ work. Amanda Amour Lynx for instance, is a queer, Two Spirit, mixed Mi’kmaw interdisciplinary artist who combines traditional approaches with new media and digital art to explore important issues such as the environment, land and relationality and gender identity. It is also important for Arbus that her artists are supported and fairly compensated. Unlike traditional galleries where there is typically a 50/50 split, Arbus has more flexible arrangements on a project-by-project basis.
While Studio Sixty-Six’s Carrie Colton, 59, has a more traditional brick-and-mortar set-up, she also represents the new ethos of gallerists. When she opened her gallery in 2013 she seized the opportunity to do things differently. “I wanted cultural diversity right from the beginning,” she said. Colton represents twenty-one artists, half are women and several are people of colour. “I’m not a gallery that is trying to represent as many artists as possible so I can cover as wide a market and make as much money as possible,” she said. “I’m really trying to work with a small number of artists so I can really help those artists with their careers.” And Colton has seen a shift in collectors looking for help to diversify their collections. “The conversations are starting to happen and it’s really wonderful,” she said.
As an entrepreneur, Colton looks for different income streams but chooses carefully. She only expands in ways that help her artists. During the pandemic she researched NFTs, something she hadn’t given serious thought to until recently. “Playing in that matrix is very interesting to me because it’s a way I can help fund the artist and the gallery,” she said. She is in conversation with her artists about NFTs and plans to include them in next year’s catalogue.
The Art-preneur
Most collectors, according to the Art Market Mid-Year Review 2021, prefer buying art through dealers and gallerists because they value the trustworthiness and reliability of these professionals and have a greater confidence in the quality of the art. For artists there are benefits like those provided by Sky Fine Foods and Studio Sixty-Six: exhibiting their work, promoting their work through their own marketing channels, liaising with collectors and mentorship, to name a few.
But access to these benefits is harder for women. Despite holding about 70 percent of bachelor of fine arts and master of fine arts degrees in the United States (as reported in National Museum of Women in the Arts), women are under-represented in commercial galleries (a 2020 survey of eighteen top Toronto galleries found fewer than 40 per cent artists were women; artists of colour fared even worse). And while there is a positive trend of greater representation of women in the primary market, the share of women declines by the level of artist establishment, according to The Art Market 2020. Women’s work sells for less too, the median price in North America is $1700 lower than men based on 2019 internal data from Artsy
For Quinn Rockcliff whose minimalist nude sketches began as a way to reclaim her body after experiencing sexual abuse from her partner, it was about taking control of her destiny. Speaking from her new studio in Toronto, she said: “In the way galleries might overlook us, we can kind of bridge that gap ourselves online,” said Rockliff, 26. “I’m sure twenty years ago, I couldn’t just be selling my work.”
In addition to selling her commissioned nudes, Rockliff has a thriving e-commerce business selling totes, t-shirts and other wearable art on her website. 2020 was her busiest year. “There was a very clear push for individuals to support local in response to the pandemic,” she said. Many women artists turn to e-commerce as a source of additional income even if they are associated with galleries. Remember Amanda Amour Lynx from Sky Fine Foods? She too sells one-of-a-kind items like Tepknuset Language Sticker Packs.
While Rockliff is doing well on her own and appreciates not having to hand over a 50 percent commission to a gallery, she is still interested in pursuing representation. “There is a lot to be said for having someone else doing all the labour of getting your work out there and presenting it in a good way,” she said.
Since graduating with an MFA from OCAD in 2019, Rockliff has learned a lot about entrepreneurship, mostly self-taught. “The interesting thing about being an artist is there are so many routes you can take and I feel that makes it trickier to teach in school,” she said. Another part of Rockliff’s value proposition is collaborating with corporate brands, something many successful artists are doing now.
One has to be savvy though. She observes many offers are not thoughtful ones since some companies only engage artists to make their brand look more grassroots. “They’re not in the community helping artists,” she said, “but using them to seem better.” Quinn’s collaborations have gone well, like the validating and positive experience she had with H&M. “It made people take me more seriously and allowed me to go on and do greater projects.” One of her guiding principles is only engaging with a brand if it is a true collaboration and she retains her name on the image. Still, it can be complicated to accomplish this, and contract properly. “I feel I need a lawyer half the time to talk to these people,” she said.
The Collective
It takes a lot of hard work and a strong entrepreneurial spirit like Rockliff’s to make it in the art world. While there are big paydays for some artists (remember Beeple?) the majority make a pittance. The 2016 median earning in Canada was $20,000 (CAD) according to 2016 statistics published by Hill Strategies. For women, the starving artist cliché is especially true.
If the art world isn’t tough enough on women, women can be tough on themselves. Even someone as accomplished as Winsom Winsom—a 75-year-old Canadian-African-Maroon-Arawak-Romani-Scottish artist—who was the first Black artist with a solo exhibit at YYZ Gallery in Toronto; member of the first group of Black Canadian artists to show at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO); the first Black person to receive an honorary doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD)—has a hard time assigning a monetary value to her work. But as her friend and two-time Juno award winning, spoken-word dub poet and Lillian Allen reminded her: “That’s old African ways. Now you have to talk yourself up.”
The bright spot in this bleak canvas is how women are holding each other up. They are helping each other gain confidence, sustain their practice and secure opportunities. Community is often the backbone of women’s success in any endeavour.
For many artists having access to free platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok is a way to develop and engage a community. For Rockliff, it was the outpouring of support of her online community that encouraged her pursue art as a vocation, not just a hobby. “My origin story is I started posting my art online to get my feelings out,” she said. She sparked lots of dialogue with others about art, consent, being a survivor.
Communities of women are working to ensure women get their fair cut of the NFT pie. The world of NFTs is dizzying. And intimidating. But running towards the possibilities of NFTs rather than running away can have a serious upside. Women of Crypto Art offers courses like ‘Setting up a Mobile Tezos Wallet’—perhaps in response to the fact that only 15 percent of cryptocurrency users are women, which obviously poses a barrier to enter the NFT world—and ‘Minting your Artwork on Hicetnunc’. All-women NFT shows like Grafitti Queens organized by Crypto Luna and one on International Women’s Day are gaining attention. Michele Pred, one of the International Women’s Day exhibit organizers, told artnet: “We want to see more diversity in the work being shared in digital marketplaces, and we want to see BIPOC women especially benefitting from this boom.”
Toronto artist Jenn Long, 47, a former assistant professor & associate chair of cross-disciplinary art practice at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) co-founded the Feminist Photography Network (FPN) to promote and sustain women’s art. Long said it is as much of an accomplishment for a woman artist to still be doing art mid-career as it is to be making money from it. “Probably more of an accomplishment,” Long said.
Long has consciously developed a diverse community of photographers, which is obvious from FPNs beautifully curated Instagram account. “I developed my eye and sensibilities within a conventional system,” Long said. “I went to university and was taught mainly by white men.” The network provides a safe place where artists can bounce ideas around without judgement. Their online residency which attracts photographers from Canada and abroad further builds community through mentorship and peer support. “For women it is about knowledge sharing and supporting each other,” Long said. “If one person moves forward, everyone moves forward.”
The other benefit of any network, as men have benefitted from for so long, is that opportunities are often hidden and happen through word-of-mouth. “If someone is looking for an artist for a show to profile, I’m more than happy to wrack my brain,” Long said. “And it tends to be in my community circle.” Long says many communities of women exist in the world of art like:
Black Women in Visual Art, Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art, Mothra Artist-Parents, Artist Residency in Motherhood, 44.4 Mothers/Artist Collective.
A Canvas of Possibilities
There’s still a lot of work to do in the art world to showcase more women and give art lovers access to a fuller range of the human experience. Yet, it feels like a hopeful time for women in the arts.
Women are helping women see a new canvas full of possibilities. And isn’t seeing things in a new light the purpose of art?
Publisher’s Note: This is the first in a series of four articles focused on feminist artpreneurs. Watch for more in 2022!
A feminist collective comes together to bring real talk to the art world.
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