centre for gender advocacy

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Take your pick of these shows this week!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29

Fattal Fest 2014 @ Fattal

Nothing marks the end of summer like the outdoor barbecue crusty blowout party that is Fattal Fest. Now in its fifth year, the festival started as a block party of sorts for the residents of the Fattal lofts in St-Henri, a nice little community-oriented get-together with cheap food, beer and punk bands. As the neighbourhood has gentrified in the last few years, the party has become more popular and has grown to include non-St-Henri residents as well. This goes over pretty well with the people I have spoken to in the past who live there as it serves to raise awareness about the socio-political situation at Fattal.

Over the past couple of years, the residents of the Fattal lofts have been battling the city and their landlord, the notorious Sam Fattal – owner of many squalid, derelict buildings and shoddy new condo developments on the island – for their right to live there and not be forced out as the neighbourhood becomes more and more desirable to condo developers.

As the event description is quick to point out, the organizers of the party (mainly Fattal residents and others in the St-Henri punk scene) do not have permission from the city to host this event so they ask everyone to keep to the parking lot, not mill around in the streets, be respectful and pick up after themselves.

Event starts tonight at 7 p.m. and continues Saturday and possibly Sunday, free.

Rae Spoon + Elena Stoodley + Lady Sin Trayda @ La Sala Rossa

Dragonroot Media and The Centre for Gender Advocacy are presenting this show tonight featuring transgender musician and author Rae Spoon. All proceeds will go to fund Dragonroot, a fairly new feminist collective that supports anti-oppressive practices in the media. They have a weekly show on CKUT 90.3 FM Tuesdays from 8:30 to 9 a.m. Shoutout to fellow FTBers Hannah Besseau and Pamela Fillion, who are also behind Dragonroot.

Doors open at 8 p.m., $8 or PWYC.

Wings of Metal Festival: feat. The Skull + Blood Ceremony + Holocaust + ADX & more @ Katacombes

Wings of Metal is an underground metal festival put on by three promoters looking to emulate the style of underground metal festivals that take place in Europe. That means lots of quality bands for a fair price, many of whom are from out of town like Toronto’s Blood Ceremony, Bölzer from Zurich, Edinburgh’s Holocaust and Brooklyn’s Natur, just to name a very few. Many of these bands, even the ones from North America, have a huge following in Europe and rarely come play here so getting to see them all under one roof is pretty special.

Bands play Friday and Saturday and to close off the festival, on Sunday there’s a metal record market followed by a barbecue and a secret show.

Doors open at 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, $45 per day; Metal record market and BBQ Sunday from 2 p.m. followed by a secret show at 6 p.m., $5 entry for the market, $15 for the show.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30

Piknic Électronik triple edition feat. Jamie XX + Misstress Barbara + Surfing Leons & more @ Parc Jean-Drapeau

The good people behind Piknic are hoping you’ll take advantage of the long weekend to check out at least one of the three editions of Montreal’s favourite summertime electronic party series. Saturday’s edition is a short one (it ends at 8:45 p.m.) with only one stage due to the Arcade Fire show that takes place that night ($10 entry to Piknic upon presentation of an Arcade Fire ticket). Their regular full programming continues on Sunday and Monday.

Shows start Saturday, Sunday and Monday at 2 p.m., $15 at the door.

Eddie Paul @ BBAM! Gallery

Show starts at 3 p.m., free (PWYC).

The 222s + Paddle to the Sea + Arbor Glades @ Piccolo Rialto

Show starts at 9 p.m., $14 at the door.

Elephant Stone + UUBBUURRUU @ l’Escogriffe

Montreal psych rockers Elephant Stone will be launching their third full-length album, The Three Poisons, which is available for streaming in full on their Soundcloud. Then they’re off on tour again (man, do these guys work hard).

Show starts at 9 p.m., $?.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31

Golden Tombs + Slight + Old Haunt @ Divan Orange

Show starts at 9:30 p.m., $6.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

Future Islands + Operators + DJ Disco Phantom @ Metropolis

This show will mark the first time Dan Boeckner’s (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs) new project Operators perform in Montreal. Go see what all the fuss is about and in the meantime, check out this review by Nameless Ponytail of their first release, EP1.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m., $18 in advance via Blue Skies Turn Black or $20 at the door.

Atsuko Chiba + Set and Setting + Christ @ Casa del Popolo

Doors open at 8:30 p.m.; $8 before the end of the first band’s set, $10 after (I can get behind this; support opening bands!).

News

Despite the start of another academic year still being months away, The Centre for Gender Advocacy is already looking towards the fall, continuing to mount a campaign to get mandatory consent workshops in Concordia University residences. The campaign includes an online petition with over 200 signatures calling for support of the workshops.

The campaign seeks to bring education about issues of consent to students residing in Concordia University residences, a number which will be growing this year with the expansion of the University’s residence system.

Julie Michaud, Administrative Coordinator at The Centre explained to Forget the Box that a similar system has already been implemented at McGill for the past ten years through Rez Project – something that she views as all the more reason to follow suit at Concordia.

However, the University’s Director of Residences has asked the Centre to take down the online petition, and telling the Centre that it would be unfeasible to hold such mandatory workshops.

Michaud pointed to the fact that the Centre had met in the past with the Director of Residence Life, as well as managers of residences to discuss the issue of mandatory consent workshops, and the response was relatively closed.

“They offered for us to come in and give one workshop – well one workshop will let maybe 20 students out of several hundred get this information, which isn’t practical. They gave us reasons we thought that weren’t very convincing about why it would be impossible to have mandatory consent workshops.”

“We did receive a call a few weeks after we put up the petition and the Director of Residence Life asked us to take it down, saying he thought it wasn’t a very good way to start the conversation, but as I said we had conversations with them and reiterated that he had given us his reasons

Michaud continued that she believes the lack of support stems from a “lack of vision and a lack of understanding for what a substantial issue this is for them to just shut down the conversation. At McGill there are far more residence, at Concordia there are less than a thousand, even with the planned expansion for next fall. ThI just don’t buy that idea that it isn’t possible or too much of a logistical challenge to make this happen.

“I think we can work through ways to really prioritize this, all of these new students coming into University and residence life usually having no decent sex or consent education in high school.”

“We need to take concrete steps to ensure that people are being respectful of one another, because residence isn’t just an apartment building, the Director of Residence Life isn’t just a landlord, residence is really a community.”

While the Centre has run optional consent workshops before, Michaud highlighted that making the workshops mandatory means that those who may not believe they need to care about issues of consent, are also receiving lessons on sexual assault and consent.

“Most survivors of sexual assualt know the person who is assaulting them, might even be in a relationship with them, it happens in all different locations, women of colour are often greater targets of sexual assault than white women. So there are a lot of issues that need to be unpacked and people need to have their conceptions of what sexual assault is broadened.

“People also need to learn what it means to support survivors because I think people also have this idea that sexual assault happens to people we don’t know […] the truth is though that around 1 in 4 students, and in my opinion that is actually a low estimate […], experience some kind of sexual assault throughout the course of their post-secondary education.

“So we have to face it, we all know someone who has faced sexual assault whether we realize it or not. And we have to learn how to be supportive, how to not reinforce the common victim blaming ideas that is so pervasive in our society.”

NewsQueer

On May 3, one day after Trans Pride Day in Montreal, the Centre for Gender Advocacy launched legal action against the Superior Court of Quebec to invalidate legal discrimination against trans and intersex individuals in the province.

This is not the first time gender markers have been debated about in Quebec. Last spring the PLQ challenged the then Bill 35, which sought to strike Article 71 and 73 from the Quebec Civil Code. Both articles required prerequisites to changing gender makers.

Later that year, Quebec’s National Assembly passed the bill, now known as Law 35, striking down the previous amendment that required name and sex changes to be publicized. However the prerequisites to change gender markers were not amended.

Despite the adoption of Bill 35 in November 2013 by the Quebec National Assembly, trans and intersex people still must undergo modification surgery that leads to sterilization in order to change their gender marker on identification, according to Article 71 of Quebec’s Civil Code.

“We’re asking the court to see, based on the Canadian and Quebec Human Rights Charter, to say that those requirements are discriminatory against trans and intersex people,” Gabrielle Bouchard, Peer Support and Trans Advocacy Coordinator at the Centre for Gender Advocacy explained in an interview with Forget the Box.

“Not only would people not have to be surgically modified, but they would be able change their gender marker before the age of 18, which is hugely important.”

Bouchard added that it would also strike the requirement of being a Canadian citizen. “You have people who are leaving their country and trying to make Quebec their home, and it makes it very, very difficult for them to meet the citizenship requirements when you’re stuck with social and structural barriers that prevent you from being a true participant in this society.”

The case aims to end mandatory gender assignment at birth, instead hoping to make it optional for parents to assign a child’s gender at birth.

When asked why the Centre is bringing the lawsuit forward at this date, Bouchard explained, “It’s because people are dying – if you want something longer, it’s because it is necessary, because conversations with the government hasn’t lead to any significant changes yet.”

“We know that the suicide rate amongst trans people is over 40 per cent […] that’s huge, those [suicides] are always about structural and social barriers, never about the gender identity, but through the difficulties to be able to be who you want to be.”

After a 2012 ruling by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal which found such legal requirement to be discriminatory, Ontario is still the only province that does not require surgery to change gender markers.

Bouchard explained that Ontario was forced to strike the surgical requirement from gender marker changes after losing a human rights case, adding that British Columbia was also taking action e to change the requirements.

The Centre has been at the front of the fight for trans rights in Quebec. Back in August 2013, the Centre filed a complaint against the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission, stating that these gender articles were discriminatory.

The Commission ruled in favour of the Centre, however Bouchard stated that the Commission followed this by stating, “Yes we see your case is valid, we can see there is a need but technically we can not do anything because as a centre you cannot ask for something without having someone who has lived the discrimination.”

“We would have had to represent someone who had lived [through] discrimination, and we can’t do that for all trans and intersex people in Quebec. We had to have a case and we didn’t feel comfortable actually asking someone to put their life and their privacy and their identity on the line to be able to do this – which is why we are doing this case right now as a Centre, so no one has to be the sole bearer of the cost,” Bouchard explained.

When asked what the next steps were for the case, Bouchard explained “we’ve just started a marathon. Let’s say it this way, those court cases can last up to two years,” adding that a hearing date would be set in October.