Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Feminists don't speak for me

Status of Women is a government funded agency that advocates exclusively from the feminist perspective. A perspective that does not reflect the position of all Canadian women or even a majority of Canadian women. Studies have shown that with each passing year fewer and fewer Canadian women self-identify as a feminist yet that is one perspective that is being funded. The Status of Women gets milliions of dollars every year to fund feminist organizations and feminist research projects. Women who are not feminists are not valued by them which they communicate in their words and in their funding.

The Status of Women is also an organization that does not have the ability to allow discussion on these topics. Recently an organization that does not reflect feminist thought wrote to their MP's - and encouraged others to write - to communicate that the Status of Women does not reflect the diversity of thought amongst women and advocates for only a small percentage of women in Canada. The Status of Women has responded aggressively to the idea that other women woud question their ability to speak on behalf of the entire population of women and are trying to sniff out any MP's who may have been sympathetic to their constitutents point of view. They are using the Freedom of Information Act to view correspondence between REAL women and various Members of Parliament. While this is their legal right under the law it shows the desperate lengths they will go to intimidate women who have different views than their own and the MP's who are considering those views. It's strange to me that the Status of Women is receiving tax dollars to intimidate other women into silence and/or to intimidate MP's from hearing the perspective of all women.

The Government of Canada needs to understand that this organization represents a radical minority of women. It does not represent the mainstream views of Canadian women.

In a country that is having difficulty meeting the health care of their constituents, who is challenged by a high rate of taxtation, and who has a growing list of basic needs that are unmet it is difficult to justify the millions of dollars that this organization receives.

Please speak out by writing your Member of Parliament or the Prime Minister and asking that they recognize that the Status of Women speaks for a minority of women and that they should not be receiving this funding.

3 Comments:

Blogger hunter said...

Great job!! I totally agree with you.

4:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How come you are whining at FD about "non-feminist" women being insulted by "feminist" women while at the same time you repeatedly insult Status of Women Canada (SWC) by calling them SOW. How hypocritical is that? And I don't believe the age 23 either.

5:36 PM  
Blogger MissHailey said...

I really can't control what you believe or don't believe about my personal information so I can't really address that.

TO be clear I have said that the insults are mostly coming from men who self-identify as feminists and/or supporters of the Status of Women. The women who have disagreed have largely been less inclined to use inflammatory language (i.e. cunt, harlot, slut, etc) although there is one notable excpetion to that. Some have just been disrespectful towards the role of staying home. I can't say that they've used such nasty terms though. Some have been very reasonable and given statistics and other information that was new to me.

The feedback about the use of the acronym SOW is not unreasonable. If you notice on the blog that I have stopped using that acronym and have fully spelled out Status of Women for quite a few days now. I had not done that on FD due to forgetfulness. I tried right now but the full spelling was too long in the signature. I have, however, removed the term SOW.

Thanks for posting.

6:01 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home