misogyny in action at UWO

I'm disgusted to hear about the recent article in the University of Western Ontario's student newspaper, the Gazette, that was part of their "spoof" issue for April Fool's day. Someone thought an article, entitled "Labia majora carnage," that took direct shots at members of a campus women's group, WIN, and alluded to rape (in the form of taking a WIN member into a dark alley to "teach her a lesson"), characterising it as humourous, would be a hilarious addition to the issue.

Yeah. Hil-fucking-arious, "Xavier," whoever the hell you might be.

Apparently, and sadly, I hear that this is not altogether surprising for this newspaper. I'm told that the Gazette has a history of being sexist, racist, and generally bigoted, and that WIN has been trying to make them more accountable. Well, the names used in the article are either very close to the names of actual WIN members, or reference specific WIN members. These women are recognizable as themselves in the article. Read it, and you can see that the article suggests that one of these women should be raped.

Talk about backlash.

This is fucking disgusting. You can help take some action. Join the Facebook group Rapist Culture at The University of Western Ontario. Write to the Gazette Editor-in-Chief, Ian Van Den Hurk at gazette.editor@uwo.ca. Email the equity services at Western at equity@uwo.ca to complain and to draw their attention to this article. Repost this on your blog or website. Spread the word about the things being written in this paper.

ETA: There's no online version of the article in question yet, but someone did scan it, so you can read it here. A warning - it may be triggering for some people.