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a touch of life hohaiyee

UN experts to examine Canada's 'tragedy' of 600 murdered or missing women By Susan Lazaruk

10:09 pm - 12/13/2011
By Susan Lazaruk, The Province December 13, 2011

The United Nations is holding an inquiry into the hundreds of murdered and missing aboriginal women and will send representatives to Canada to inerview victims’ families and government officials, two Canadian women’s groups announced Tuesday.

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/experts+examine+Canada+tragedy+murdered+missing+women/5853219/story.html#ixzz1gTSecn00


Finally! Before, the Highway of Tears and the atrocity that is the many missing or murdered aboriginal women had to be brought up during the Olympics, because there was just no platform, and little official concern. ...and I think the police should not have the right to write off drunks as liars and the missing as runaways, not until we have scientific proof that being drunk grants us a magical immunity against being raped and that a fairy godmother grants teens with the kinda life they would want to run away from a special protection against being victimized.
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leprofessional 14th-Dec-2011 04:39 am (UTC)
Why is tragedy quoted in the original source though? O_o
hohaiyee re: 'tragedy' — 14th-Dec-2011 04:58 am (UTC)
The ' ' is commonly used when a newspaper is quoting somebody else.

...but my first thought was, a tragedy, well, in a Shakespearean tragedy, the tragedy in question was unavoidable, wheels already in motion.


Whereas um, a bunch of women being disappeared, murdered, and police not taking it seriously? That's not so much a tragedy as it is an atrocity, man-made.
beoweasel 14th-Dec-2011 05:53 am (UTC)
You know, I was thinking the same thing.
velvetunicorn 14th-Dec-2011 04:50 am (UTC)
Thank God. Then maybe some action will happen nationally. We've been way to slow on the uptake on this. I recently read Missing Sarah and my heart dropped when I heard that the Vancouver PD had two seperate lists for missing women: missing women and missing sex workers. I mean, really? To be so blatant as to categorize them seperate and therefore less important.

God, it makes me want to hide under the covers for weeks.
hohaiyee 14th-Dec-2011 05:01 am (UTC)
/I recently read Missing Sarah and my heart dropped when I heard that the Vancouver PD had two seperate lists for missing women: missing women and missing sex workers./


Choked on scream, I just choked on my fucking scream, fuck them.


Dude, sex workers are either

1. Doing it because of preference - in which case, thank them for it and NO it doesn't give anyone the right to victimize them.

2. Doing it because they HAVE to, for survival, teens kicked out of their home, who ran away from broken homes. MOTHERS suddenly single.



Srsly screen smash.
hohaiyee re: the separate list — 14th-Dec-2011 05:12 am (UTC)
Actually, it makes investigative sense to have separate list of different victims - because it is likely they have different predators, but they better as hell NOT shove sex workers cases to the back, especially since sex workers are, 'the favourite prey of serial killers':

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/crime/targeting-prostitutes.html

...and then they move onto riskier and riskier groups of victims and predatory behaviour as they grow more confident. Paul Bernado started with 'date rapes' before he moved onto the blitz from a bush attack, and then the kidnapping that got him caught. Ted Bundy's last victim was a 12 year old girl (due to things like Amber Alert, children are definitely very risky choices for serial killers, and crimes against children by strangers are taken more srsly. Colonel Williams attacked women, first a woman he knew, then unpredictable strangers, but when they caught him, he had the underwears of little girls and he might have been working up to that).
er0tic_chill 14th-Dec-2011 05:15 am (UTC)
I'm so glad that the UN is finally taking action on this. The current Canadian government is making me more and more frustrated in terms of where they are placing their priorities.

One of my profs actually teaches a class on missing women called "Missing Women: Decolonization, Third Wave Feminisms and Indigenous Peoples".
vanishingbee 14th-Dec-2011 05:46 am (UTC)
This is actually really great to hear, I didn't even know this was a possibility.
romp 14th-Dec-2011 06:24 am (UTC)
Finally! I read this story at the CBC and read the comments. I was lucky that the batch on the then-first page were good.
hohaiyee You read the comments? — 14th-Dec-2011 05:13 pm (UTC)
Frankly, I think aboriginal studies should be mandatory. I thought I was progressive when I took that class, but it turns out I had a lot of patronizing views. There were just some stuff I didn't realise until it was pointed out to me in clear lecture: The aboriginals are basically our landlords, or more like, we broke into their house, did a lot of Very Bad Things, and now we DO own them reparations, and no, the statute of liability shouldn't be out when we are still enjoying the spoils AND that colonization is not just a thing of the past, but present, in consequences AND ongoing oppressive practices.

martyfan Re: You read the comments? — 14th-Dec-2011 07:22 pm (UTC)
Agreed. My college (I'm in the USA, I should say) offered a course on Native American Religions, which is the closest we got to a study of the First Nations themselves, and there were a lot of culturally ingrained prejudices that we all had to recognize in ourselves throughout that class. I had plenty of ignorant things to say when we started, and I'm sure I still do, but I never would've known it without a class like that. And it's shameful that classes like those are electives, not mandatory.

Although one of my English classes also broke the tradition of American literature starting with the colonies, and we had an entire unit on native stories and oral histories before Columbus even got a mention. So there's that. But again, it took until college to get that.
magus_69 14th-Dec-2011 12:05 pm (UTC)
So far so good, but I withhold judgement until we see what comes of this. It wouldn't be the first time that a positive initiative quickly (and quietly) peters out once the spotlight is off of it. I really hope I'm just being cynical, though.
martyfan 14th-Dec-2011 07:35 pm (UTC)
Also, I looked through the tags and there's one for "first nations," since "native americans" may not fit exactly, that you might want to add to the post.
hohaiyee added — 14th-Dec-2011 07:38 pm (UTC)
we really need one for "women of color" and "marginalized women"
martyfan Re: added — 14th-Dec-2011 07:40 pm (UTC)
Hopefully that'll be something that can be added once the mods get around to reorganizing the tags. Lots of duplicates in there, and lots of subjects not being covered. I don't envy them the job in the slightest.
deleriumd 15th-Dec-2011 01:24 am (UTC)
I think I have reached my limit of exhaustion. I real the title of your post as "600 murdered or missing women by Susan Lazaruk" as in Susan somehow murdered 600 people.

For two seconds I sat there thinking "How the hell could one woman murder that many people?!".
hohaiyee Stop Everything — 15th-Dec-2011 02:37 am (UTC)
SLEEP First!

Trust me, everything you do post sleep would be better.

Goodnight!
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