AARON: PLEASE DELETE YJIS DUPLICATE THREAT — sorry! Don't know quite how I managed that…

Its just hellish......!!!!

The police did arrest two men, one was a roofer living in the U.S. (since deceased)  and the other was a young fellow living in the area in B.C.  whose trial comes up this year.

Aboriginal women experience the most violence, but our society still has a bias against all women when it comes to violence:  it seems to be that the consequence for a crime against a woman is, on average, less severe than for the same crime against a man.  Murder a man in a moment of rage, and it is hard to imagine a sentence of less than 20 years; murder a woman in a moment of rage and a sentence of 10 to 12 years seems quite common.

Men are valued more highly than women most of the time, and one of the areas this is visible is in regards to violence.  It also applies in other areas.  When the Chretien Liberals won in 1993, they cancelled the contract made by the Mulroney government with a group of businessmen and a contract for military helicopters.  The govt. settled with both parties for undisclosed sums of money.  At the same time, the govt. fought a ruling on pay equity all the way to the Supreme Court.  If fairness requires paying businessmen and investors, it will be done.  If fairness requires paying female workers, it will be resisted.  If treaty requirements call for making payments, but the country is in a recession, don't bother paying (Late 1800s).  If business contracts or MP salaries are at stake, borrow money to pay what is owed.

Racism and gender bias is alive and well, though not as successful as they used to be, in Canada.  The movement towards greater equity has created a large number of angry white men resenting the loss of their various privileges (see closing column in the latest edition of Alberta Views).

Thank you Mike for bringing this to our attention - or reminding us of something we already know but have pushed to the back of our minds because it is too disturbing to think about. 

Women are raped and murdered - here in Canada - here in our own cities.  And a great number of them are native women.  Others are mentally ill, or have fallen through the cracks and live on the margins. 

Its easy to ignor them, and forget about them.

Why would people care?  It's not something most of us directly see.  Most of us have seen women being sexually harrassed and not much is done.

After seeing the video of a girl unknowingly having her hair fondled on the LRT the frustration of a typical lack of response came up again.  At least someone recorded it though, that's something.  If someone is being harrassed in a physical way, people tend to step in.  When someone is being sexually harrassed in a physical way, people don't usually step in.  AFAIK, schools aren't doing anything to teach people what to do in the cases.  I didn't when I was in school.  When it's happening to someone their automatic reaction tends to be to freeze up.  We teach things like self defense and carrying keys in a pocket against a full on attack, but we don't teach what to do when the business man on the LRT runs his hand up and down your leg.  We don't teach what to do when you are across from the person who had a hand run up and down their leg.  It is something that I feel strongly NEEDS to be taught.  Why aren't we doing it?  These creeps are shocked and embarrassed when they are called out, because chances were they weren't called out the 100s of times they did it before.

chemgal .... such things make my blood boil.....

... as a redhead ...... sitting across from someone doing something like that to another woman and seeing the look on her face .... lets just say that I would call out the guy loud and clear and make sure those around were aware of what a boor he is... full public exposure right there on the spot.....

I am so saddened and disgusted that persons are not "good enough" to be respected and protected.    There are so many groups .... and that is the problem .... groups.....

Native people, women, this ..... that ... whatever ......

As long as we allow people to be hearded into groups and not be seen as persons we will continue to have this quiet polite discrimination go on......

Persons ..... with names ... with lives ...... persons......all personally valuable.....

Sincerely

Rita

Give me a source saying the police ignored the native cases in that northern BC episode just because they were native. I don't believe it.
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I seem to recall reading that one of the murders was easier to follow for some reason. I could look up a source if you want, but you don't seem interested in sources or facts.
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Graeme's statement the other day that the victims of Robert Pickton were ignored because they were native is also false. I read a whole book on it. There were many non-native victims too, and they were ignored too. They were ignored because they were prostitutes.
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Get your facts straight.
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Ingoring them because they were prostitutes was clearly a terrible thing to do. In fact, reading the book was a shocker. The police ignored tips, pleading relatives, etc.
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I just want to get the record straight. This was not due to them being native. I'll give you the book name if you want, even research the northern BC case.
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I suspect I will be either a) ignored or b) the pitchforks will come out.

They were ignored because they were not seen as important enough to care about.  That may have been because they were homeless, or sex-trade workers, or NAtive, or drug addicts, or...

In the end it remains that some poeple are seen as more valuable than others (in practice if not in theory) when it comes to allocation of resources.  And NAtive is generally a category that falls into the "less valuable" pile.

It ocurs to me that the fact that aboriginal women are often forced into ior caught in a cycle of prostitution makes their being aboriginal relevant- it's not just about "was it because they were prostitutes that nothing was done? Or was it because they were native?" You can't necessarily make those two things mutually exclusive. We should be having a parallel discussion anyway--asking, as well as why nothing was done when it happened- why is it that a disproportional number of aboriginal women become prostitutes? I imagine we would find the same negative attitude about a group or groups of people at the root

Why prostitution? Poverty and desperation probably have a lot to do with it, together with abuse and low self-esteem instilled by racism.

And far from ALL of the victims have been prostitutes.

I see no reason to treat the rape/murder of a prostitute differently from the rape/murder of anyone else. 

The relevance of factors such as these exisits only in the propaganda of violently-disposed male bigots.

It's the lack of public outrage that worries me.

I agree. I am upset about it. Why do people not make more noise about it? Probably fear, probably guilt that women are in that position and our attitudes portrayed in our media and/ or culture contribute to it, or we are lulled into apathy by the barage of advertising and media we see everyday that becomes "normal"- making us all part of the problem that leads to these abuses or lack of attention paid to them. In my opinion, at the root of the problem now,when it comes to abuse against women, there is so much misogynistic trash in the media that permeates our culture and influences our attitudes about women. It's a huge task to change it, and to change minds about it. To legislate against negative portrayals of women in the media, for example, people would complain of censorship  or rights of expression and so on- and yet, how do we change attitudes if we don't change what influences our attitudes? Just a question I have-- I don't have an good answer to it. We can work on ending the cycle of abuse by giving better educational and work opportunities to empower girls  and women though- and stick with it. Maybe, wiithout having to legislate the media outright, that would lead to change as far as  how girls and women are portrayed in the media,and begin to change how people are influenced to think of women.

I heard (or read) an interview once.  A young girl prostitute explained that by choosing who to approach she often got a meal, a bed for the night, and a bit of cash.  It was far better than sleeping in the streets or in a park where she might be raped a half dozen times. 

Think about it.  Wouldn't you rather spend the night in a bed with just one man, than behind a park bench with four or five guys? 

I don't get the media priority for the attack in India. 

Should we be in the streets demanding stronger police action and political action to halt these assaults. It seems there may even be one or two serial killers on the loose.

Maybe street action is the way to go?

Sorry.Edit. I'm getting off track. Bouncing back and forth between a few threads. You mean, why is the focus on India, not here. It's easier to look at the problems in someone else's backyard than in our own, I guess.

Rita, if only more people would do that!

i look forward to the Quentin Tarantino movie

I think the bias against women is that women are somewhow seen ro deserve this treatment bc of wearing short skirts or some stupid reason.

Women are also easier targets bc they are not as strong as men so easier to kill.

It is sickening. Not sure what I can do about it.

While it didn't happen on Canada, the issues of Steubenville seem appropriate to be discussed here.  Between that and the LRT video, I was planning on starting my own thread, but the timing just felt wrong to me with Christmas.  I was trying to focus on being a little peaceful, and Mike posted this before Christmas was over for me!

I found the responses to what happened in Steubenville to be extremely disturbing.  Are things getting worse or better?  ;

EasternOrthodox,

In the British Columbia inquiry into Robert Pickton’s years of unchecked murders,  the final report by Commissioner Wally Oppal cited “systemic bias” among police. It did not focus specifically on Aboriginal women and girls.

http://voices-voix.ca/en/facts/profile/missing-and-murdered-women-inquiry

There are countless reports across Canada and the world that police have failed to properly investigate hundreds of disappearances — and murders — of native women.

There have been calls for investigation into the high rate of violence against native women and girls. Local and federal goverments have ignored many of those calls.

The UN report CEDAW (Commission to End Discrimination Against Women) on Canada was supposed to be released in the summer of last year. So, far, I find nothing.
 

Among those callign for investigation - The Native Women's Association of Canada, The Indigenous Women's Collective, The Missing Women Commission https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:mQ-d_gVS3lcJ:www.missingwomeninquiry.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Protection-of-Vulnerable-and-Marginalized-Women-00261663.pdf+police+native+women&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShLFX0hXQo1ODOf3zuiYpq99LCKvVZRHZTpHJ5oVmtVrI90_ODsjyfa18IvGBY8Kwhs1At6QEAVHhrPxQa39KJqr1YC0PETDrepH_b5e4a2jjcyLPvtkSiU2iaSLzMtsGF3DOF8&sig=AHIEtbSzbajuVA09xiiJu0ZYUxAbw1hXBg

Amnesty International, etc....