Women's Issues are About Men Too

As with time, I'm a bit obsessed with language. I strongly believe that healthy and developed communication is the key to our interactions, and I am especially interested in how language can shape our perceptions and actions. This is true within several dynamic issues in the 'women's rights' realm.

It's time to admit and actively advocate that 'women's issues' stop being such a gendered thematic. Education, daycare, women's health and violence against women are as much men's issues as they are the women's. But as we devolve the language around these subjects into purely female words and experiences, we not only remove men from the dialogue, but from any actionable involvement and solution as well.

The US Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments in the Hobby Lobby case, pitting the Affordable Care Act against a woman's access to contraception. In short, if the Justices favour the department store's arguments, they will be allowing, for the first time, a for-profit corporation to claim religious rights and protections which may then directly prevent insurance from covering women's access to birth control, if these corporations can prove that such coverage is a 'substantial religious burden.'

Women's Voices in Social Media: International Women's Day

I recently spoke at a Conference on Women's Voices in Social Media, hosted by The Canadian Federation for University Women at Trent University in Peterborough. It was a lively and important discussion, and I was able to sit on a panel with brilliant speakers who touched on many aspects of the challenges and opportunities for women online and the policy reform and state role in criminalizing certain behaviors.

Below is part of my speech and more after the break. Saturday is International Women's Day - and in an era where our digital connectivity has become synonymous with our 'real world' selves, women must be empowered to be active participants and creators of information and not simply passive consumers.