hate crime at utsc.

This is cross-posted, with some edits, from my private journal, since I am not up to rewriting anything on it. It hurts too much.

So it's a Saturday, the day after spring formal, which was awesome, and I slept until three, and spent the afternoon and evening messing around on Facebook instead of doing homework, as usual. I'm scrolling through my friends' status updates when I notice someone's. It says something about arson and hate crime on campus. I'm concerned so I leave a post on her wall asking about it, and carry on.

A few hours later, still procrastinating, someone else has got a similar status up. One of his friends has written on his wall that they "saw the board" and someone else is asking what happened. Now I'm really concerned. Both of these friends are involved with the LGBTQ Lounge and I'm worried something happened to it. So I throw on my coat and take off to the B-wing, where the Lounge is and where they have a big bulletin board, in a glass case, between the AMACSS and SoSSA offices.

This is what I saw:



Someone set the bulletin board on fire. You can see that a whole pane of glass is missing and the scorch marks. There's residue, I presume from a fire extinguisher, on the frame and on the floor and on the two buttons placed on the ledge. When I got close to the board, I could smell the smoke. I went down to the Lounge itself to see if anything happened there, but it looked fine. I came back to the bulletin board and was almost too upset to take the picture, but I did.

Today I've heard a little more details. Apparently the glass casing was not smashed, it was removed from the frame. The administration should be releasing statements soon. There is now a Facebook group, which has a different picture posted:



Clearly from before it was all cleaned up, like when I saw it.

I am pissed off beyond belief. I'm angry and I'm worried and I'm scared for my friends. I hope the assholes who did this get caught and are swiftly punished.

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.