(no subject)

I felt like I needed a bath in Clorox after making the mistake of reading some comments on a commentary piece by Renee Martin at the Guardian, "On Canada's 'Highway of Tears': Violence against indigenous women is not only a crime, but a reflection of Canada's refusal to repudiate its colonial history".

Yeah, I usually avoid comments on larger news sites. I almost wish I had this time. I have noticed hostility before whenever colonialism is brought up, but the attempts at derailing and nastiness on this one are something special. (Throw together misogyny, willful ignorance*, and enduring colonial racism, and that's not really a surprise.) They seem bent on proving her main point:

These murders and disappearances will only be seen as the great loss that they are when Canadians acknowledge the value each indigenous woman has.

The way defensiveness and general arsiness overrides any sense of humanity is probably what bothered me the most. No colonialist attitudes there! *headdesk*

An example of the kind of internal sense even the not-so-blatantly-trolly ones make:

The cases mention raise several points for me -

1) Truck drivers and the roads they operate on are inextricably linked with the murder of lone, vulnerable women. This is true the world over.

2) Women from ethnic minorities are more likely to be poor and therefore more likely to be victims of this type of crime either because they are sex workers or because they are put in position where the only means of transport avaiable is hitch-hiking. Again, this is true the world over.

3) The Highway of Tears does not demonstrate Canada's "failure to stem the tide of violence that aboriginal women face". Rather, these are isolated and extreme cases. I'm sure most of the violence committed against these women is perpetrated by partners and family members who are themselves indigenous.

4) There is no clear, tenable link between these crimes and Canada's "colonial past". That's a leap too far.

Yeah. You get a lot of poor, desperate indigenous (now minority) women spontaneously appearing out of thin air to get killed by their Own Kind, or inevitably by truck drivers, in some kind of economic and social vacuum--no colonialism required. And that was from one of the less blatantly trolly comments.

And this isn't even the Daily Fail.

_____________

* Like the bit that says:

According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men. [similar holds for stalking, etc.- U.]

Sexual violence against Indigenous women is the result of a number of factors including a history of widespread and egregious human rights violations against Indigenous peoples in the USA. Indigenous women were raped by settlers and soldiers in many infamous episodes including during the Trail of Tears and the Long Walk. Such attacks were not random or individual; they were tools of conquest and colonization. The underlying attitudes towards Indigenous peoples that supported these human rights violations committed against them continue to be present in society and culture in the USA. They contribute to the present high rates of sexual violence perpetrated against Indigenous women and help to shield their attackers from justice.

Those factors don't somehow vanish once you cross the Canadian border. And with the hateful denialist shit that people feel like it's OK to say, no damned wonder the situation is the way it is.

(no subject)

Not to inflate the last post too much, here's Amnesty's report: Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and violence against Indigenous women in Canada, which I unaccountably forgot to link.

And, yeah, similar factors are pointed out:

According to a Canadian government statistic, young Indigenous women are five times more likely than other women of the same age to die as the result of violence.

Indigenous women have long struggled to draw attention to violence within their own families and communities. Canadian police and public officials have also long been aware of a pattern of racist violence against Indigenous women in Canadian cities – but have done little to prevent it.

The pattern looks like this:

* Racist and sexist stereotypes deny the dignity and worth of Indigenous women, encouraging some men to feel they can get away with acts of hatred against them.

* Decades of government policy have impoverished and broken apart Indigenous families and communities, leaving many Indigenous women and girls extremely vulnerable to exploitation and attack.

* Many police forces have failed to institute necessary measures – such as training, protocols and accountability mechanisms – to ensure that officers understand and respect the Indigenous communities they serve. Without such measures, police too often fail to do all they can to ensure the safety of Indigenous women and girls whose lives are in danger.

Also:

Deep rooted patterns of racism and discrimination in Canadian society have contributed to this violence in a number of ways. These include pushing Indigenous women into situations of increased vulnerability to violence, denying many Indigenous women adequate protection of police and the justice system, and sending a message to Indigenous and non-Indigenous men alike that they can likely get away with acts of violence against Indigenous women...

It is also clear from these stories that all Indigenous women – whether or not they have ever had involvement with what police and politicians sometimes label “high risk lifestyles” – may be targeted for violence or denied protection from violence simply because they are Indigenous women. The 1991 Manitoba Justice Inquiry concluded that racism and sexism intersect in dangerous stereotypes of Indigenous women as sexually “available” to men.

I cannot readily find stats on how many of these crimes are committed by non-Indigenous men, unlike the 86% figure for the US.

But, in the previous post, we're talking about more than 500 missing and murdered women, "half of them since the year 2000...the equivalent of 18,000 missing and murdered non-aboriginal women". And this is still getting treated as a few isolated cases.

ETA: See also Jessica Yee's Making the connections: Sexual Violence in Native Communities, now that I've located the link. She goes into how little attention this usually gets, and asks some excellent questions:

HOW is it that you don’t know?...WHY don’t the women in our Native communities measure up in priority?...WHAT are YOU going to do with this information now that you know about it?

(no subject)

It is frustrating to have to choose between (a) taking a shower, (b) cleaning the fish tank, (c) going grocery shopping, (d) getting some writing done, or (e) cooking a decent supper, as a plan for the afternoon.

Today I went with the grocery shopping option (not entirely happy without the shower first!)--with a GF frozen pizza, some pre-cooked chicken to help balance it out, and some broccoli to dip into dressing for supper. On the brighter side, as of today Ingvar is now using up holiday time instead of losing it for the rest of the month before starting the new job, and he came along to help carry stuff home. Also, the bus drivers for both trips were less maniacal than I've come to expect, and I at least managed to get braced before the bus jerked into motion. So, less resulting pain (and/or falling over). And the post-shopping pain meds have kicked in now.

I'm looking forward to spending more time with Ingvar, with less stress. :)

On the not-so-bright side, Neighbor Weasel has the devil's own luck at avoiding the cops. Four of them were looking for him this morning, so he's up there now making a lot of noise. I may not like the legal system (or the whole "let's set up a state" thing) much, but I hope he is gone before long--whether they pick him up or he runs off to avoid them. Not quite enough to call them and say, "Hey, you were looking for the guy upstairs? He's up there now, being a noise nuisance. Please come and get him ASAP," however. :/ I just avoid him as far as possible.

Oh yeah, from another hard-not-to-overhear phone conversation, he apparently also does have a drug problem as suspected. (This is not a reason to look down on him, per se, but when it's some kind of stimulant that seems to make him act more violent and generally obnoxious? Yeah, I'll object.) From the way he keeps suddenly starting hacking and then bouncing off the walls--literally, a couple of times--I suspect meth. Whatever it is, it really doesn't seem to do him a lot of good.

ETA: We also had a power cut overnight, which killed an aquarium filter powerhead. Thank goodness that wasn't the main filter on the tank, or I'd have been heading to Tranquility Aquatics (good independent shop!) up the road instead of buying food. And I finally picked up some bird seed today, and want to make another feeder or two tonight, which should actually be pretty fun.

Disability and UK fuel poverty

I'm trying to put a longer blog post together tonight, but thought I'd post something shorter on the disability-related concerns in the meantime here.

With the cold spell the UK is in now, I've been feeling extra-lucky to have a warm house and no serious financial worries. Especially after seeing reports like this: Britain is freezing to death:

( People really suffering from the cold )