Stand-up comic Erika Ehler.

I take improv on Wednesday nights in a basement dance studio with floors so sensitive we’re not allowed to wear outdoor shoes on them. The ratio of men to women in the class is about five to one, which is pretty normal. It’s my turn to play.

On stage my scene partner stations himself at an imaginary computer, tapping the keyboard. He says, “It’s not working!” and I go over, put my hands on my hips and say “Hmm.” The teacher shouts to stop and we freeze.

“What do you think is happening in this scene?” she asks.

“Steph is coming on to him,” one of the male students says.

“Yeah,” another man chimes in. “Definitely something sexual here.”

In my head I’d imagined I was wearing coveralls and had a moustache. I wasn’t thinking about sex with a co-worker. Before I have the chance to say so though, the teacher shouts “Go!” and we continue the scene with the attributes we’ve been endowed with.

A week later, we’re working on an improv tool called “second beats,” where we take elements from previous scenes (characters, attitudes, objects) and play them in a new environment. A male player walks on stage and asks his female scene partner, “How’s your vagina?”

I immediately look to the teacher to see if he will stop the scene or give a redirect, but he’s silent. The woman on stage stumbles over some words. We make eye contact (I’m the only other woman in the room) but I don’t say anything either—I don’t know what to do. In the scene before, another male student complained about his sex life and his scene partner inquired whether his wife was wet. So, loosely, his question could be labelled as a second beat. I’d like to argue that unless you find yourself engaged in sexual activities with a person with a vagina, it’s probably never okay to ask that question.

Being a woman in comedy means you can’t just be in comedy. You can’t separate your identity from your hobby, passion, or place of work. In class and on stage, I make the same choices I’d make on the sidewalk and streetcar, in the bar and at the gym, but now everyone’s looking. Inseparably woman here, my choices are weighted by knowing I might have to teach a group lesson to a wily room.

Erinn White, a stand up-comedian in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., shoulders this responsibility in her material, which she calls “observationally political and explicitly feminist.” The 35-year-old has told men in her shows who believe (and vocalized) that they thought it was their job to heckle that they won’t be able to shut her up. “Because I’m older than the general comedy club crowd and look physically nonthreatening—like a history teacher,” she believes she can sometimes get away with calling people out.

But Erika Ehler, a Toronto stand-up, has had a different experience. “There’s no reward for doing the right thing,” she says. Ehler quit running an open-mic at the venue Smiling Buddha when a racist comic wasn’t fired or banned from the premises after his repeated behaviour. Both women have been accused of “being delicate” and told they “can’t take a joke.”

It’s why I didn’t stop the scene in class myself. I couldn’t decide if it was my job to stand up. It sometimes feels like women can’t do anything but just go along with dastardly behaviour without losing a room, friend, or gig.

“There are times where the people who have the power don’t see the problem or don’t care,” says White. “So who has the authority and the obligation to confront this stuff?”

In one way, it’s us.

Even though it’s uncomfortable, I won’t stay quiet the next time sexist behaviour plays on stage or in class. Stage lights play tricks and make some people think they’re as big as their shadows. But when I tell a sexist to suck it, or at least back off, it’s bigger than me.

Photo by Hilary Gauld Commercial.

When Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt said, at a science conference in 2015, that the trouble with women in labs is they cry and fall in love, the scientific community reacted with a barrage of vituperations from both sides. For doctoral candidate Eden Hennessey, one hashtag became a call to action.

Under the banner #DistractinglySexy, female scientists took to Twitter to clarify what it’s really like for them in the lab or field. “Here I am shoulder-deep in cow rectum,” one woman tweeted. “So seductive!” Hennessey, a social psychology PhD candidate and manager at the Centre for Women in Science at Waterloo’s Wilfrid Laurier University, responded with another, more on-the-nose hashtag: #DistractinglySexist. The hashtag mobilized women across science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields to present their true stories of confronting sexism.

As part of her dissertation, #DistractinglySexist became Hennessey’s first photo-research exhibition, drawing attention to sexism in Canada’s “Silicon Valley”—Ontario’s Waterloo, Kitchener, and Cambridge areas. The project integrated art and social psychology research methods to assess whether women fighting sexism in STEM fields face greater social costs than other women, and if so, how can those costs be buffered.

The #distractinglysexy trend is phenomenal. Here I am shoulder-deep in cow rectum, so seductive! pic.twitter.com/fz0v5fygTK

— justmeness (@VanessaAdams6) June 11, 2015

If you look at a high school math or science class, you’ll notice more than half of the students are girls. In university, the number of women in STEM drops to about 39 percent. By the time they get into the workforce, women hold 22 percent of jobs in STEM fields—up just two percent from 1987.

“For women in STEM,” says Hennessey, “it’s not just the lack of women, it’s the resistant and slow rate of change.”

The sluggish improvements are both a cause and symptom of the old boys’ club culture that continues to disadvantage female scientists. While there’s myriad data describing the gender gap in STEM, Hennessey was compelled to communicate the problem in a different way.

“We all have a right to be presented facts in a way that’s easily understood,” she says during our interview, before she makes her way to a protest march in downtown Waterloo to fight for her rights in STEM labs. “I wanted to de-silo knowledge from the ivory tower and present it such that it can get us the funding we need and effect change for STEM women.” Indeed, her work is part of a small but growing movement toward academic activism. The idea is that by taking hard data and converting it into creative expression, research becomes more inclusive and creates a wider, more powerful impact.

On the heels of #DistractinglySexist, which attracted international praise, Hennessey recently launched #DistractinglyHonest. This second exhibit features female-led research that unpacks whether honesty is the best policy for women facing sexism in STEM fields.

In the series, Imogen Coe, Dean of Sciences at Ryerson University, is photographed looking over rose-hued glasses with the message: “We cannot change what we will not see.” Coe’s piece highlights that male-authored studies are deemed more scientifically valuable than female-authored ones, even when those studies are identical. “There was something intensely personal about Eden’s photo-essay,” Coe says. “She focussed on individual women and their authentic self. We’re supposed to be scientists—hence, unemotional—but the photography aspect of her exhibit made us value ourselves more. It’s about engaging men and not about fixing women.”

The stats suggest girls grow up with just as much interest in science, math, and technology as boys. The shift away from STEM, then, is linked to cultural messaging that says women and girls don’t belong.

“There are systemic barriers every step of the way for women,” says Hennessey, noting that this is particularly apparent for women who want to have children in graduate school. “For them, financial support is minimal. It’s a cultural issue and a big deterrent for women.”

Of the 14 portraits featured in #DistractinglyHonest, perhaps the most poignant is of 10-year-old Alyssa Armstrong. She’s wearing headphones inside a bubble, shielded from negative gender biases. “I want to go to Mars when I grow up,” she says.

When that time comes, Hennessy is hopeful projects like hers won’t have to exist—that Alyssa and other young women can pursue their ambitions, undeterred by flawed cultural mores. “Changes to such systemic pressures need to happen in the next decade,” Hennessey adds, “or we’ll lose another cohort of scientists.”

Bikini Kill.

The “Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses” exhibit at Seattle’s EMP Museum should have been heaven. For a fan of Nirvana, Mudhoney, and a bunch of other bands from the Pacific Northwest like me, a room filled with rare artifacts, such as the sweater Kurt Cobain wore for the MTV Unplugged appearance or the drum kit Dave Grohl played on In Utero, was like grunge Disneyland.

But my trip to the happiest place on Earth was not so happy for two reasons: a security guard who was a real stickler for the “no flash photography” and the “stop putting your greasy hands on the glass surrounding the Grohl drum kit lady from Canada” rules, and the lack of women included in the exhibit’s history of the scene.

The Seattle scene—a problematic term but one that my word count doesn’t allow me to complain about at length so let’s just group some bands that sound nothing alike together with some musicians that may or may not be from the region and pretend we’re a lazy music journalist in 1992—has always included women making music and playing in bands from The Fastbacks to Dickless to The Gits, but you wouldn’t know that from its history.

For a supportive scene that celebrated diversity and opposition to the mainstream, the contributions of women are often ignored, glossed over, or trivialized. Reading books or watching documentaries about “grunge”—again I hate this term, but word count—you would think it was one big flannel-clad sausage fest or that the only women making music at the time was Courtney Love. The history of grunge is definitely not about a girl.

A 2016 issue of British music magazine Q celebrated the 25th anniversary of grunge with a special package that featured musicians and insiders talking about the scene and its music. Sadly, there were no women included in the piece. A list of the 25 most influential grunge albums includes just one entry from a band featuring women, Hole’s Live Through This at number 23—a great album, but one that 23 years later people still wonder if Cobain wrote, which is infuriating to say the least. A Rolling Stone readers’ poll of the best grunge albums of all time doesn’t have a single female on the list. (Also, number one is Ten by Pearl Jam, which makes me want to cage fight all the readers who participated in this poll.)

April 5 marked the 23rd anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain. In February, Cobain would have turned 50. Life magazine recently published a special edition to coincide with Cobain’s 50th birthday, and each year on the anniversary of his death we get articles, thinkpieces, and the opportunity to revisit every conspiracy theory around his death the internet has to offer.

The anniversary of the death of Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley, who died of a drug overdose in April 2002 at the age of 34, is treated in a similar manner. There are editorials, collections of clips of great performances, and photo galleries.

Mia Zapata. Photo by Jackie Ransier.

If only female musicians who died were afforded the same column inches. Gits lead singer Mia Zapata was brutally raped and murdered after leaving Seattle’s Comet Tavern in July 1993, but there is never a media mention on the anniversary of her death. Same with 7 Year Bitch lead guitarist Stefanie Sargent, who died in 1992, or Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, who died two months after Cobain in June 1994. These deaths are largely ignored and overshadowed by those of their male counterparts.

Many of the grunge bands popular at the time—Nirvana and Pearl Jam specifically—regularly challenged sexism and traditional gender roles, as well as championed feminist organizations and causes. They also supported their female musical counterparts by bringing them on tour as supporting acts and mentioning them in the press.

While the atmosphere of the time was encouraging of female-fronted acts, and the women were talented, they still never received the coverage they deserved. Women seemed only to be taken seriously when a male musician lent them legitimacy or credibility, like Eddie Vedder supporting Rock for Choice—a concert started by L7—or Cobain name-dropping Bikini Kill in interviews.

Stefanie Sargent.

If female musicians did receive press it often focussed on their appearance and how they dressed,  or relegated them to special “women in music” features, ghettoizing them and packaging them as one cohesive group and failing to acknowledge their diversity, unique musical styles, varied approaches to feminism, or individual histories. Not to mention the fact that female promoters, venue owners, music writers, and photographers were barely mentioned at all.

“The Top 11 Hottest Women in Grunge”-type list was a common editorial fixture in the ’90s, highlighting appearance and sex appeal over any musical accomplishments, basically treating female musicians as nothing more than eye candy with guitars. Describing Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, one list says, “Hanna is smart, fearless, and can rock either a fiery punk look or a hot librarian outfit like few others.” She sounds like a punk rock paper doll.

Coverage at the time also tended to focus exclusively on Courtney Love—grunge’s most popular poster girl and widow—with her much-publicized antics and opinions overshadowing the important contributions of other female musicians. Or the media fixated on Olympia, Washington’s Riot Grrrl movement, which many female musicians were associated with whether they identified as Riot Grrrls or not.

And when they’re weren’t being judged solely on their looks, they were often mentioned only in regards to their relationship to a man. Love will always be defined by her relationship to Cobain, sadly, even 23 years later. L7’s Jennifer Finch should definitely be written about for her musical accomplishments, but one book I read felt the need to repeatedly remind me she once dated Dave Grohl.

Of course, grunge is not the only musical scene to ignore or marginalize the contributions of women. In her 2014 Guardian article, “Punk has a problem with women. Why?” writer Charlotte Richardson Andrews described punk rock’s problem with female visibility. She argued that women were forced to fight for space in an industry where men held all the power and made all the decisions. Women in the punk scene were ignored by male music executives, male journalists and male promoters. They were objectified by music magazines and experienced sexism from an industry that only promoted “the lucky few to whom industry gatekeepers deign to give a platform.” She could just have easily been describing grunge or any other music scene.

As the summer concert season approaches and festival line ups are announced, a fun internet pastime is to remove all-male acts from lineups and see what few bands are left. It’s a pretty depressing game, to say the least. Despite the fact that women make up over half of the attendees at summer festivals, you won’t find many of them on stage.

A 2015 breakdown of summer festival lineups found that the percentage of female acts ranged from a dismal 13.5 percent to a still depressing 30 percent. The lineup for this summer’s Reading and Leeds Festivals includes 57 men and one woman. Lady Gaga recently headlined Coachella, but this was only the second time a women has taken the top spot in the festival’s 18-year history. It’s shaping up to be another cruel summer for music fans. And, yes, I did just Bananarama there. Thank you for noticing.

Illustration by Matt Daley.

On February 9, 2016, at 3:45 p.m., Gail Benshabat sent a text to her 27-year-old daughter, Lisa, asking if she wanted to catch an early movie. Benshabat was wrapping up her workday at a quiet special needs school in the north end of Toronto, about a 30-minute drive from the third-floor apartment where she lived with her daughter.

Lisa never texted back.

“I knew something was wrong,” Benshabat recalls. She returned home and rushed up a flight of stairs with an immediacy only a mother can know, calling out Lisa’s name. With no response, she put her bag down and rounded the corner of her kitchen into her daughter’s bedroom down the end of the hallway. Lisa was hanging lifeless from the ceiling fan in her room.

Lisa left three letters for her loved ones: one to Benshabat, one to her older sister, and one to her extended family and friends. “Mom,” she wrote on the first of five pages, “I want you to know that you did everything you could to help me and more…. I couldn’t have gotten this far in life without your endless love and support. At this point you can tell that I lost hope that I would ever get better.”

Lisa suffered from interstitial cystitis (IC), a little-known medical condition characterized by chronic pelvic pain and a heavy pressure in the bladder and pelvic region, often associated with urinary frequency and urgency. It manifests in sharp, shooting pain, pressure, or spasms in the bladder, pelvic region, and lower back. It has been likened to carrying a bowling ball with knives in it.

IC currently has no known cause or treatment. It is also tremendously difficult to diagnose because its symptoms mimic other conditions. It’s not unusual for a diagnosis to take up to 10 years.

The pain of the illness—a pain that has been classified by some doctors as being worse than bladder cancer—was wreaking havoc on Lisa’s life. She felt she had frequency to urinate more than the average person. But doctors said there was little they could do. Even after her death, the message was repeated. On the night of Lisa’s funeral, Benshabat woke up at 3 a.m. and started writing emails and letters to the doctors who cared for her daughter. Many replied offering their sympathies; yet, one psychiatrist responded with his condolences but still suggested that Lisa’s pain was all in her head.

This is a common theme for many female chronic pain sufferers: their symptoms are dismissed as psychosomatic despite studies and tests confirming the opposite. According to a report in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics in 2001, “women who seek help are less likely than men to be taken seriously when they report pain and are less likely to have their pain adequately treated,” the researchers conclude. These findings have been repeated in medical journals in several years since.

It’s not uncommon for women with marginalized illnesses like IC to feel hopeless, even suicidal. It’s why chronic pain patients—often women—attempt suicide four times more than the general population, and why suicidal ideation is three to four times higher in IC sufferers. Even in a field that has been criticized as sexist for decades, doctors continue to perpetuate stigma against women—and for chronic pain sufferers like Lisa, that can often be the difference between life and death.

***

There were few years in Lisa’s young adulthood that weren’t plagued by constant pain. She found some relief in 2001 when, after Benshabat took to the internet to conduct personal research on IC, she found a urologist in Toronto who would prescribe the pain medication Pyridium. The pills relieved the bulk of Lisa’s symptoms for a couple months when she was 12 and again when she was 24, but she still experienced intermittent pain, spasms, and urinary urgency. Unsure when the symptoms would hit, she slept in until noon most days hoping to avoid a longer day of pain.

Many doctors dismissed Lisa. After waiting for months for an appointment with a Toronto IC specialist, she was told the pain was nerve related and there was nothing to be done. Another specialist in St. Catharines, Ont. offered no hope.

Then, a female doctor at Women’s College Hospital gave her some hope, conducting her own voiding test in her office. “It is not in your head, Lisa,” the doctor confirmed. Finally, someone set the record straight. For the first time ever, a doctor confirmed what Benshabat and Lisa knew all along: her pain was real.

Desperate, Benshabat and Lisa turned to a doctor at Toronto Western Hospital to insert a sacral neuromodulator, a surgically implanted device that sends out mild electrical pulses to the nerves in the lower back. The device helps people with urinary function and with chronic pain. But it doesn’t help everyone.

By her 24th birthday, Lisa had seen the inside of more than 10 specialists’ offices across North America—and no one could stop her ongoing physical agony

“It took us some time to persuade [the urologist] to try out the sacral neuromodulator,” Benshabat says. Eventually, he agreed. But after two weeks, Lisa noticed that there was no change to her symptoms and asked that it be removed. Postsurgery, as Lisa was wheeled into the recovery room, tears streamed down her face from the pain she was experiencing. The doctor turned to her. “I don’t know what else I can do for you,” he said and promptly left the room. There was a look of horror and outrage on the attending nurse’s face. “She went to bat for us,” Benshabat says.

When Lisa and her mother left the hospital that day, Benshabat “filed that bad experience away at the back of my mind. Our hopes were shattered,” she says. “I wanted to file a complaint to the hospital but at this juncture I needed all the strength to keep Lisa’s hopes up.”

Benshabat and her daughter did not stop searching for relief. In 2014, Lisa visited pain clinics, received more medication. She had MRIs and CAT scans. She was tested for EhlersDanlos, a connective tissue disorder, but a geneticist ruled it out. She saw physiotherapists, naturopaths, acupuncturists, and an osteopath.

By her 24th birthday, Lisa had seen the inside of more than 10 specialists’ offices across North America—and no one could stop her ongoing physical agony.

There were still options. Benshabat encouraged Lisa to keep trying. There was a doctor in Kitchener, Ont., who offered up bladder instillations, a cocktail of medicines that are put into the bladder directly. The same doctor’s research assistant encouraged Lisa to take part in their clinical trial for a new IC medication. Lisa declined: she wanted immediate relief, not a trial. The research assistant was disappointed. “You know some people with IC take their lives,” she told Benshabat.

Benshabat kept searching. She found a highly recommended physiotherapist in Kitchener with remarkable results in relaxing pelvic floor muscles. Later, she came across an IC specialist in Michigan, a three-hour drive away, but a date mix-up made Lisa miss the appointment. It wasn’t rescheduled.

“We didn’t want to overdo it,” Benshabat says. “So many doctors were all repeating the same story: It’s a disease that is not well understood and that they don’t know enough about.”

Fifteen years after her first experience with pelvic and bladder pain, with no answers on the horizon for how to live a normal, pain-free life, Lisa gave up.

***

Lisa’s experience is not singular, and gender biases remain glaringly common in North American physicians’ offices, the ER, and medical research—regardless of the ample studies highlighting the problem. While an estimated one-tenth of Canadians under 44 experience chronic pain, a disproportionate number of sufferers are female.

Yet, according to “Relieving Pain in America,” a 2011 report published by the Institute of Medicine on the public health impact of chronic pain, women’s reports of pain were more likely to be dismissed. Joe Fassler’s eye-opening essay for The Atlantic in 2015 details this through the story of his wife Rachel and her dismissive experience in a Brooklyn, New York emergency room department. Nurses frequently told her to stop crying from the pain—a pain that was the result of a twisted fallopian tube that her attending physician misdiagnosed as kidney stones because he didn’t check the tests before finishing his shift.

Rachel’s experience recalls the “Yentl Syndrome,” a term coined in a 1991 academic paper by Bernadine Healy, noting that women do not receive aggressive or proactive treatment in their initial encounters with the health care system until they “prove that they are as sick as male patients.” The study was named after the 1983 film Yentl starring Barbra Streisand, whose character dresses up as a boy in order to receive the education she desires. Healy found that men were often expedited and taken more seriously than women when treating cardiovascular complaints.

Later, in 2014, Katarina Hamberg, a researcher out of Sweden’s Umea University, found “women are less likely than men to receive more advanced diagnostic and therapeutic interventions” for coronary artery disease, Parkinson’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, neck pain, knee joint arthritis, and tuberculosis—all chronic illnesses—even when they presented with the same severity of symptoms as their male counterparts.

For Abigail, an artist from Kingston, Ont., suffering with endometriosis, it’s a familiar story. Abigail, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, suffered debilitating menstrual cramps since the age of 14. Her first doctor dismissed her suggestion it was endometriosis, another chronic and hard-to-diagnose disease that manifests in severe menstrual cramps and gut-wrenching pain; she was instead prescribed Midol, a medication billed to help menstrual pain, and Ibuprofen. The pills made a small difference.

But in 1999, Abigail collapsed from excruciating menstrual cramps during her first day on a new job in Toronto. The emergency room doctor she saw said it was a common ailment. “This is part of being a woman,” he said. He prescribed Ponstan, a muscle relaxant, which Abigail would use religiously for the next decade.

It would take almost two decades before Abigail was diagnosed with endometriosis. Like Lisa, she found herself turned away by doctors who dismissed her pain, or pumped her full of pills and antibiotics that failed to relieve her. In 2005, she was hopeful when a gynecologist in Montreal discovered a dermoid cyst on her ovary and scheduled surgery to remove it; but during the procedure, the doctor was unable to do so without also removing her ovary. Without Abigail’s consent, the cyst was left alone.

Her pain never subsided. Following the surgery, she emailed the gynecologist a succinct list of detailed dates and pain recurrence since the surgery, along with a rational fear it could be symptoms of ovarian cancer. He wrote back: “Blah, blah, blah. Contact the receptionist for an appointment.” Abigail descended into a depression. “I thought I was going mad because no doctor could explain what was causing the pain,” she says.

Abigail and Lisa aren’t alone. Writer Olivia Goldhill from New York had to self-diagnose endometriosis after her primary care doctor “waved his hands dismissively” when she asked if her pelvic pain could be connected to her menstrual cycle. And Sarah Barmak, in her 2016 book Closer: Notes from the Orgasmic Frontier of Female Sexuality, cites a similar story from Vanessa, a woman who went from having multiple orgasms to experiencing intense pain during sex. She was told by doctors, who were unable to successfully treat Vanessa, to “just not have sex” as a means to cure troubling uterine pain. Barmak doubts a man would be offered similar advice.

***

Are doctors dismissing pain in women because they themselves cannot find an answer?

A majority of those suffering from chronic pain are women, and often, their disorders are not easily understood by the medical establishment. This is due in part to a lack of funding and research available.

An editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine explains menstruating women are “being excluded from clinical trials, and that when they are included, they’re tested early in their menstrual cycles, when their hormone levels are closest to men’s.” And according to Julie Palmer, a researcher at Boston University, it’s still easier to recruit male test patients for some disorders, leaving women behind.

Meanwhile, some studies lay the blame on women and their inability to communicate efficiently with doctors. The University of California, Davis’s Michael Moskowitz says men are better able to voice their pain symptoms in ways doctors can respond to. Sweden’s Hamberg echoes this, noting that “men describe their symptoms in a straightforward and demanding way, while women often… give vague symptom descriptions and hesitate to accept potentially dangerous measures such as surgery.”

And even though female chronic pain patients outnumber male chronic pain patients, there are more male pain physicians than female pain physicians in North America. Because women experience pain more intensely, more frequently, and respond differently to pain medication and pain management therapies, male doctors may have trouble understanding their symptoms.

Abigail, like many, is still at odds with how little her doctors could assist her. When asked how the doctors came to diagnose her in 2013, she said there was “always a lack of information”—all of her doctors would consult a massive tome of pharmacology to diagnose the symptoms, but none of the medications they prescribed helped completely. Despite the numerous conferences, newsletters, and medical journals available to keep doctors in the loop surrounding diagnoses and available treatments, there is no guarantee specialists are always up-to-date.

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada says a subspecialty of Pain Medicine was approved in October 2010 and new national standards were implemented effective July 2013—meaning more research and treatment for chronic pain sufferers could be imminent. Senior communications specialist Melissa Nisbett, however, can’t confirm that there is a central database or online forum for doctors to consult for puzzling and seemingly incurable symptoms.

Desperate for answers, many, like Benshabat, turn to the internet, joining forums for support and searching for more understanding specialists abroad. Others simply linger in pain. As Carolyn Reilly, a reproductive justice advocate who suffers from endometriosis, writes in an article for Bitch magazine, something must change. “Female pain exists in a crossroad of stigma, disbelief, and misogyny. Female pain must be regarded as legitimate,” she says. “Because disbelieving and delegitimizing female pain is a form of oppression.”

***

When Lisa gave up her fight against IC, Benshabat felt responsible to keep searching for answers. More than a year since Lisa’s death, she is carrying on her daughter’s legacy by creating more awareness surrounding IC and those suffering with chronic pain, participating in talks at Canadian universities about the emotional impact of IC. She is also attending international conferences in the U.S. to share Lisa’s story with others.

“There is a moral responsibility by our medical system to turn their sights toward people who are giving up on life,” Benshabat adds. “I don’t want anyone to have to suffer like my daughter had to.”

These days, Benshabat often thinks back to the letter Lisa left for her. She is reminded of her daughter’s loss of hope, of the years in doctors’ offices that left her feeling defeated.

In the end, Benshabat’s efforts are calls for restored hope—that someday, Canadian women suffering with chronic pain, just like Lisa, will be treated with more respect and dignity by the health care providers intended to help them feel better.

Here’s a glimpse so far:

Up for Debate

Wouldn’t it be handy if there were a debate specifically about women’s issues? There hasn’t been one since 1984. That means there has not been a debate focused on women’s issues in my lifetime. Up for Debate, an alliance of over 175 national women’s organizations, invited Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair, Justin Trudeau, and Elizabeth May to debate such issues. Mulcair was proud of the fact that he was the first to accept the invitation. Trudeau and May also accepted, and Harper did not. When the time came, Mulcair backed out. If Harper wasn’t doing it, neither would he. As a result, because two men didn’t want to play, organizers canceled the event. Up for Debate went ahead with Plan B, where one-on-one interviews with the politicians were arranged. Mulcair—the guy who backed out of the debate last second—took this opportunity to identify as a feminist. Trudeau also says that he is a proud feminist. Harper did not participate in the interviews.

I was looking forward to this debate. Very disappointed it had to be cancelled. https://t.co/q2Awq4iQcX

—    Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) August 24, 2015

Where did our debate go, @ThomasMulcair? And @pmharper? #women #GPC http://t.co/iSLL9pN4Ue pic.twitter.com/m1cQArPhnZ

— Green Party Canada (@CanadianGreens) August 24, 2015

Transcripts of full interviews:

Mulcair

Trudeau

May

Munk debate

The Munk debate is a charitable initiative of the Aurea Foundation, a right-wing organization founded by Peter and Melanie Munk of Barrick Gold. The September debate was on Canada’s foreign policy. Unlike the women’s issues debate, RSVPs to to the invitation of right-wing millionaires were quickly accepted, disheartening to say the least. May was not allowed to attend. The Munk Debates reasoning is the Green Party does not have party status. However, as a charity they are not legally allowed to support or oppose a political party. So the reason is official, not because of the boys-only nature of the Munk Debates. In the end, May used Twitter to participate in the debate. Trudeau said May should have been able to attend. Yet, he still attended, as did Mulcair and Harper.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Harper has said there really isn’t an issue around the fact that Indigenous women are over-represented among Canada’s missing and murdered women. For him, it is a non-issue that does not rank high on the Conservative radar. Not all candidates agree with him. “”Do you think that if 1,200 women who had been murdered or had gone missing in Ottawa, we’d need the United Nations to tell us to have an inquiry?” Mulcair asked at an August rally. “It would have happened a long time ago. This is about racism, that’s what this is about.” The NDP leader says he will launch a national inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women. May has said the same and Trudeau has committed to support indigenous advocacy groups.

Childcare

Women today can work! Just for less money. Oh, and often only within daycare hours—which usually do not reflect the precarious shift work so many women undertake. Currently, Harper maintains he will slash all benefits for low-income earners, including childcare. Trudeau says he will end this trend and help families with lower incomes. Mulcair promises affordable childcare, saying, like healthcare, childcare is worth the money. May agrees that childcare is kind of a big deal.

Sex Work and Bill C-36

Harper passed Bill C-36 into law, further endangering the lives of women in sex work. But actually, he is saving them, because these women need to be saved by the morals of rich white men, as do we all. (Sarcasm intended.) May says the Green Party will repeal C-36, and Trudeau said, last year, that his party would be looking at the Nordic Model. More information about parties’ positions on sex work can be found here.

Domestic Violence

Those who participated in the Up for Debate interviews touched on this subject. Prior to the debate, the only thing the Green Party addressed in terms of domestic violence, according to a Toronto Metro article published August 26, was that “false allegations” were common. OK. At least, by the time the interviews were done May, a self-described feminist changed her tune, saying Canada needs a national strategy to confront domestic violence against women. Both Mulcair and Trudeau spoke about Parliament being a boys’ club and that they will lead by example there to make it less so.And money for shelters is a good idea, says Trudeau, but it isn’t up to the federal government to create them because municipalities, he believes, should do it. So, someone is going to do something, don’t worry about it.

Abortion

Pro-choice, anti-choice, reproductive rights. Light stuff, right? Harper doesn’t actually come out and say he is anti-abortion rights. Instead he says that abortion should not be discussed within politics because it is a matter of faith and morals. And although his own faith condemns these rights, he isn’t in the good books of anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition (CPL). The Conservative party is, though. At least there is someone out there ready to police women’s bodies. Phew. The CPL hates Trudeau, so that’s a good sign for the Liberals. Mulcair’s NDP is also pro-abortion rights: “A New Democrat government will increase funding for women’s organizations, particularly women’s rights organizations. Family planning, reproductive and sexual health, including access to abortion services, must be included in Canada’s approach to maternal and child health.” May is also on Team Abortion Rights.

The Niqab

Conservatives were getting attention for doing things like peeing in people’s mugs, and that was weird. So, a distraction—I mean, very important issue—was created by the Harper government. The niqab is a veil that covers part of the face and a sign of faith worn by some Muslim women. It is also being attacked for being anti-Canadian—as decided after settler colonialism. The argument goes something like this: “My white grandparents knew what it was to be Canadian (after white folk made what it is to be Canadian tailored to said grandparents) why can’t everyone else?!”

While fostering xenophobia the Conservative party is saving women by oppressing women. Anti-Muslim propaganda is being circulated on social media and women are being attacked because of this federally accepted hatred of the “Other.”

Mulcair says this is wrong. Like, no one likes the niqab, he says, but we need to trust the authority of tribunal decisions. Trudeau is also opposed to Harper’s stance. At a Maclean’s sponsored debate the Liberal leader said:  “You can dislike the niqab. You can hold it up it is a symbol of oppression. You can try to convince your fellow citizens that it is a choice they ought not to make. This is a free country. Those are your rights. But those who would use the state’s power to restrict women’s religious freedom and freedom of expression indulge the very same repressive impulse that they profess to condemn. It is a cruel joke to claim you are liberating people from oppression by dictating in law what they can and cannot wear.” As for May, at a televised French debate she said, “It’s a false debate . . . What is the impact of the niqab on the economy, what is the impact of the niqab on climate change, what is the impact of the niqab on the unemployed?”

Fun Facts

• Trudeau addresses misogyny, in certain communities.
• May re-started a women’s caucus in Parliament.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her second year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

A cartoon by Ronnie Ritchie explains this nicely, with the example of feminism. The heading is, “What they mean when they say they’re not a feminist.” One example shows a white girl saying, “I don’t need feminism. Women aren’t oppressed anymore.” The next panel shows what she means: “I don’t realize how privileged I am that my race/nationality/sexuality/assigned sex/gender identity/size/ability minimizes the effects of the Patriarchy to the point I don’t think it exists.”

It can be easy to deny privilege when it is invisible. We are used to a set of defaults. White people can easily walk through city streets without noticing the sea of white faces on billboards. bell hooks writes about this in her essay, Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination. She writes that white people are able to think their whiteness is invisible, and that whiteness can exist without knowledge of blackness, while still asserting control. hooks also writes out that white students in her classroom often erupt with rage when their whiteness is looked at, “they believe that all ways of looking that highlight difference subvert the liberal conviction that it is the assertion of universal subjectivity (we are all just people) that will make racism disappear.”

Excerpt from Ronnie Ritchie’s comic. Read the whole piece here.

Heteronormativity is everywhere and not questioned. We’re presented with only one seemingly acceptable variation, which is if a queer couple acts heteronormative: gets married, buys a house, practices monogamy (this product of heteronormativity is defined as homonormativity). Heteronormativity is still the dominant narrative; it pins down people, labels them, and fits them into heteronormative roles.

On the same note of default settings and Othering people:

An all-male movie cast is normal, an all-female cast gets an automatic “chick flick” label (or worse, a feminist label!) Western culture is “normal” and everything else is “exotic” and “barbaric.”

Pretty much, #capitalism.

It can be hard to realize one’s own privilege, and even harder to accept it. A white person living in poverty, or a male person of colour, for example, still face oppression despite the colour of their skin or performed gender, so how can they be privileged? This is where intersectionality comes into play. Factors like those mentioned in Ritchie’s comic determine certain privileges and oppression. Yes, Patricia Arquette was right when she said sexism needs to be addressed. No, she was not right in alluding that sexism only oppresses white, hetero women.

At risk of showing my keener attitude as a first year undergrad, I’ll link to Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Starting with, “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.” She then lists privileges she has a white person, that she may not have noticed before. Privileges like: being able to challenge a situation without being called a credit to her race; knowing her voice will be heard in a group of white people; and knowing her children will learn about their race’s existence in school. These privileges can apply to other privileged and oppressed groups, too.

So, what if you understand that oppression exists, but as a person in a certain place of privilege, you want to be an ally? This can be tricky at times, but there is a solution: shut up and listen. Certainly, stand in solidarity and show your support. But, realize that there are times where those you’re being an ally to do not have the same chances to speak as you, so let them have their chance. This can be hard when you want to show you care or are passionate about equity among people. Remember, in these situations, where you are a member of the dominant group, it isn’t about you. The best thing you can do is listen. That is more important than feel goodism.

But, but, it just doesn’t seem fair! What about men’s day, white history month, a straight pride parade? Well, a straight pride parade is any time a passing heterosexual couple can walk into the store without being harassed. White history is what we are taught right away in school. And since we live in a patriarchy, every day is men’s day. Again, if we are already in the dominant group, we may not notice these things in our lives. And if we are oppressed in other ways, it can be hard to understand that we have any upper hands in life at all.

Excerpt from a comic by Jamie Knapp.

Read the whole comic here.

When we do notice our privilege, it can get pretty yucky feeling. This doesn’t mean we get to run from it, we need to face it and deal with all the nastiness so we can properly understand. Recognizing our own privileges doesn’t demonize us; it doesn’t mean we exploit our privilege purposely. It does mean that we benefit from privilege. It is up to us what we do with it and how we can build an equitable world.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

Of course, violence against women becoming the focus of conversation got some people angry. Coincidentally, this ManKind Initiative video went viral* at the same time as #YesAllWomen, with many video-sharers writing about how this proves violence against women is always taken seriously, and therefore isn’t the real problem. Other gems included: Let’s just forget about it and move on; violence is violence, why segregate it into just violence against women; and, let’s all forget about feminism and be humanists instead. Blah blah blah. How very noble.

Instead of seeing the very real struggles and violence women are faced with every day, many saw the discussion as man-bashing. Because, what about the men? Not all men are like that!

As a friend of mine says, “If it bothers someone that gendered violence against women is a *focus* of conversation, that person should probably look internally to figure out why that is, rather than throwing a bunch of misogynistic and derailing temper tantrum on the interwebz.”

Fantasy author Jim C. Hines also wrote a response to this attitude on his Facebook page:

“Countless women are speaking out about their own experiences of being threatened, harassed, stalked, intimidated, and assaulted by men for the ‘crime’ of saying no. And you as a guy want to make the conversation about your hurt feelings?”

It is often the case that everything feminist gets derailed in order to make it seem less important. This strategy is clearly successful as the patriarchy is still very strong—if it weren’t, this pesky Yes All Women nonsense wouldn’t exist. I agree that some people truly believe sexism doesn’t exist, or that feminism prevents all sides from being heard. But as Feministing contributor Juliana Britto writes in her article An open letter to privileged people who play devil’s advocate, “These discussions may feel like ‘playing’ to you, but to many people in the room, it’s their lives you are ‘playing’ with. The reason it feels like a game to you is because these are issues that probably do not directly affect you.”

Others don’t want anything to change, or they simply don’t care; they dismiss feminism to justify their lack of empathy and action. Thankfully, as the Yes All Women movement grows, these people are controlling the conversation less and less.

* Violence against men isn’t funny, despite the amount of male rape jokes telling us otherwise. Dismantling the societal expectation that males must be tough guys and not “pussies” will help everyone a great deal. However, the existence of violence against men  does not make the predominant sexism against women disappear. It is a shame this video took the comparison route to showcase a real problem.

I know it is just a meme. I do. And yet it really, really pisses me off. There are obvious reasons: it reduces women to their physical attributes, it claims women have it easier in life than men because of our sex appeal, and  it is even kind of slut-shaming—you know, because the fact that a woman has breasts in the first place makes her sinfully slutty. Thanks, Bible.

The “free stuff” breasts provide are unsolicited comments and uninvited stares. They are what makes the fifth grade girl who developed first a “slut.” For a large part of society, cleavage, of all varieties, seems to freely label what kind of lady one “truly” is— dependent on how much or how little is showing. When a woman breastfeeds everyone is free to have an opinion on it —and heaven help her if she can’t breastfeed for any of the many possible reasons—because then she is not a woman. Which brings me to small-chested ladies: by so-called popular opinion, we aren’t even deemed women because we don’t have “tits” to get us “free stuff” in the first place.

And, who wants that free stuff, anyway? How does this one part of our body make our lives easier? Through our paycheques? In abuse shelters? (The lack of) executive  positions? The taunting we get when we are kids, the grabs we get in crowded subway stations—trust me, this isn’t the free stuff anyone wants.

This is such an old rant but snide comments and their internet meme counterparts bring this offensive discussion up over and over again. Women have breasts, of all flipping shapes and sizes: Get over it, world! Just, get over it.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna writes Gender Block every week and maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

Facebook is now applying regulations intolerant of gender-based hate speech.

On May 28, the company released a statement on how hard it is for it find a balance between freedom of speech and community respect. In the past, the social media site has faced similar situations regarding Jewish, Muslim, and LGBT communities. If something doesn’t fall under Favebook’s definition of hate speech, it is deemed offensive or controversial, but not necessary to take down. Such logic can become frustrating when a picture of a woman breastfeeding, posted to her own account, can be taken down but a meme making light of an abused preschool child remains to circulate on timelines.

Together, groups sent Facebook advertisers 5,000 e-mails. Magnum Ice Cream may not want to be associated with murdering pregnant women, and Dove may not fancy being in the vicinity of a message saying to break the fingers of a deaf, mute woman so that she can’t report being raped.

Some advertisers kept quiet, but Facebook promises not to. In its letter, the company says its evaluation process of material will be more thorough and will involve the consultation of women’s advocates, effective immediately. They say a test program was already in the works to make creators of offensive content include their authentic identity, which, it theorizes, will make them more accountable for their work.

Of course, there are outcries over the internet saying this is a violation of free speech, and that if something isn’t illegal in the United States it shouldn’t be banned. But with over a billion active monthly users, the folks at Facebook are smart to consider their entire audience. Just because something isn’t illegal, doesn’t make it ethical. Laws are made based on the times. Both legal and ethical codes need to keep up with social media being part of every day life in order to stay relevant and continually used.

From April Reimer's Twitter: "For those who were thinkin @happyelishas and I were rolling our eyes @ eachother. Was the jerk beside us #rudecomment"

If you didn’t hear, the Toronto Maple Leafs made the playoffs, a first since 2004. The last time they won the Stanley Cup was in 1967. This is all newsworthy stuff, history made with the youngest team in the playoffs.

But it was a look between two women that made the news for days. “DRAMA! Elisha Cuthbert and Leafs Goalie’s wife caught in a serious death stare,” tweets one sports journalist. A CBC web post showed six gifs of the non-verbal exchange, “Or stink eyes, or ‘bitch faces’ or whatever,” it reads (They managed to find three expressions for women looking at each other, but couldn’t get the team name right regarding the goalie). If sports journalists felt the need to cover this, of course Extra TV would chime in, too: “It looked like the making of a catfight.”

The media manufactured hockey wife feud did start out with the aforementioned sport. The Leafs lost to the Boston Bruins in game four, 4 to 3 in overtime. The Bruins scored on Leafs goaltender James Reimer after a bad play by defenceman Dion Phaneuf.

The cameras panned the audience section for the team’s family members’ reactions. April Reimer, married to James, and Elisha Cuthbert, engaged to Phaneuf, looked at each other and did not seem impressed. I’m willing to bet a lot of people watching that game looked unimpressed. But this happened between two women, thus, bitchcraft must have been involved. This “news” was talked about for days—even after the two women clarified the situation (Who asked them anyway?) and said they were reacting to a rude comment made by a nearby fan.

In case you didn’t know: Women can be friends and interact with each other. We don’t actually isolate ourselves until it’s time to fight to the delight of our audience. In response to all the speculation, Cuthbert tweeted, “Things are not always what they seem. I’m insulted and disappointed by a lot of these comments. That’s real. Not a 3 sec. Clip.”

Woman on woman hate is nothing new to television and film, “You don’t, as a woman, get to be in films with too many women,” says Susan Sarandon in an April interview with HuffPost Live. “And if you do, you hardly ever are in scenes together. You’re usually, naturally, pitted against each other.” We see this in The Real Housewives series where female “friends” do nothing more than scream at each other and shit-talk behind closed doors. Or in the modeling industry, like with Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks, where the media collectively decided two black women can not be successful in modeling at the same time, thus they must hate each other. In American politics we had bitch-labeled Hillary Clinton versus “ditzy” Sarah Palin.

This assumed inherent sexism between women further trivializes our existence. If we are taught from a young age, watching interchangeable Disney princesses fighting likewise evil step-mothers, we will grow to learn that fighting something that’s supposedly silly—like, say, earning less than our male counterparts—is less meaningful than figuring out who is and isn’t a slut. The alienation of friendships between women just means a further dependency on our male counterparts. Things will forever remain imbalanced.

Now, like a commentator said during game six of the Leafs-Bruins series, can we quit talking the lady stare down, and get back to hockey?