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November-December 2018

I grew up in the age of VCR recordings and pay-per-view. Now, I’m raising my son in the streaming era.

Anne Thériault on what she's learned from Netflix, iPads, and her seven-year-old

Anne Thériault

Now that my son is seven, our weekend mornings have gelled into a proper routine. He wakes up at some ungodly hour—earlier, by the way, than he gets up on weekdays—and plays for a while in his room. When he’s tired of that, he’ll grab a couple of granola bars from the kitchen and then […] More »

Toronto film screenings break down female representation on the big screen

Inside the bimonthly series Bechdel Tested

Hanna Lee@hanlllee

For Erica Shiner, 2015 marked the year she first launched herself into the world of feminist activism. That May, she started a petition to stop American rapper Action Bronson from performing at Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square for annual music festival North by Northeast, saying his lyrics “[glorify] gang-raping and murdering women.” After gaining more than 40,000 […] More »
January-February 2018

Whose job is it to tackle sexism in comedy?

The onus often falls on women—but it shouldn't

Stephanie Philp

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 […] More »
November-December 2017

REVIEW: Lauren McKeon’s new book sheds light on the world of anti-feminism

Inside F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism

Stephanie Milliken

F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminsim By Lauren McKeon Goose Lane Editions, $22.95 In her first book, F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, Lauren McKeon, an award-winning writer, former This Magazine editor, and contributing editor at Toronto Life, investigates why contemporary feminism is deeply fragmented, and argues that we cannot continue to ignore […] More »

What the NDP leadership race taught us about attitudes toward pregnant women

Niki Ashton may not have won, but stereotypes about her pregnancy are still a pressing matter for politicians

Nora Loreto@NoLore

After my Vancouver book launch in October 2013, I headed right for the snack table. My travel schedule had brought me from Winnipeg to Vancouver early that morning: I had slept on a friend’s floor in Winnipeg and arrived before sunrise in Vancouver. By the end of my talk, the sun was back down and […] More »

Inside the complicated world of North American anti-abortion activists

Lauren McKeon follows anti-abortionists south of the border in her new book, F-Bomb

Lauren McKeon

The day before the 2017 March for Life, anti-abortion activists took over the hulking Renaissance Washington, D.C. Downtown Hotel. After lunch, I joined about fifty activists, lawyers, law students, and others for the adjacent Law of Life Summit, designed to advance the anti-abortion movement through putting forward more antiabortion legislation, attacking Planned Parenthood as a […] More »
July-August 2017

Peek inside Canada’s only feminist bookstore

Montreal's L’Euguélionne carries 4,000 titles

Megan Jones@MegJonesA

On a Thursday evening in May, about a dozen women gather around a large wooden table at L’Euguélionne, Canada’s only feminist bookstore. The Montreal shop is filled with chatter as the crew, participants in a zine-making workshop, sift through piles of paper. Since it opened in December 2016, L’Euguélionne has become a hub, hosting public events like […] More »

How survivors are confronting sexual assault on one Toronto campus

Tamsyn Riddle has filed a human rights complaint against the University of Toronto in the wake of her alleged sexual assault

Hillary Di Menna

Tamsyn Riddle was excited to start her university courses in 2015. At the University of Toronto, where she majors in diaspora and transnational studies and minors in equity studies and political science, her academic successes would be appreciated in a way that they weren’t at her Peterborough high school. Plus, she could be a part […] More »
May-June 2017

The heartwrenching reality of mourning between cultures

How one writer dealt with her father's death, between Canada and Morocco

Sheima Benembarek

One morning, in early September 2011, I sat at my work computer and watched my hands hover over the keyboard, shaking. I had just flown back to Montreal from Morocco, a trip I’d done many times since I immigrated to Canada six years ago; I was used to flying across time zones. But these hands […] More »

The grunge music scene has a serious problem with sexism

While Kurt Cobain steals the media spotlight this April, the month of his death anniversary, you'd be hard pressed to find any news about comparable female acts

Lisa Whittington-Hill

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 […] More »
January-February 2017

New anthology tackles popular misconceptions about virginity

University of Regina Press's Virgin Envy talks chastity, purity, and the meanings behind a first time

Ashani Jodha@ashjodha

Virgin Envy: The Cultural (In)significance of the Hymen Edited by Jonathan A. Allan, Cristina Santos, and Adriana Spahr University of Regina Press, $27.95 Losing your V-card, popping your cherry, your first time: losing one’s virginity is a sacred rite of passage in many cultures—but the contributors of Virgin Envy aren’t buying into the archaic and stereotypical […] More »