When 13-year-old McKenna Pope went to buy an Easy Bake Oven for her little brother (who requested one from Santa), she was appalled to discover that the Hasbro toy only featured females on its packaging, and was only offered in the stereotypically female colours of pink and purple. But instead of settling for an unfairly […] More »

I sighed loudly when I read the “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” cover line on the latest issue of The Atlantic (July/August 2012). When done sighing, I wondered what the “all” was now. I hoped the “all” was a nap because I was exhausted before I even opened the issue and read Anne-Marie […] More »

Toronto’s LGBTQ community is gearing up for what is set to be another successful Pride Week in the city. The event  has taken place in various forms since the late 1970s and has run annually since 1981. It continues to grow increasingly popular within the LGBTQ community, but also with all members of society. Last […] More »

Oh god, not this joker again. These are the first words that enter my head when I see the new issue of Rolling Stone on the newsstand. The cover features a haggard Charlie Sheen. He looks like a cross between a chain-smoking bobble head and a contestant vying for first place in a Keith Richards […] More »

GOP convention features bullet-pocked Obama outhouse In case you’ve been living under a rock this year, a presidential election in the U.S. is fast approaching. That means all decorum is lost and the shit hits the fan—or, in the case of some political “art,” the bathroom. A Republican Party convention in Montana this weekend featured […] More »

Over 30 years ago, the pro-choice movement in Canada was at its peak. In 1970 the Vancouver Women’s Caucus travelled across the country as part of the Abortion Caravan. Stopping in various cities and towns on their way to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the women spent their evenings hearing the stories of other women so […] More »

Hello, This Kiddos. Today I woke up and read that ex-gay therapy is still being presented as the way to “help” kids who are dealing with homophobic harassment and thoughts of suicide. Oh man, guys, I’m so vexed about this I can’t even find something witty to write. Ex-gay therapy is promoted as solution to […] More »

Since today marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, we wanted to highlight some recent stuff that’s appeared in This and elsewhere on the subject of gender justice and equality. Emma Woolley at Shameless has provided a comprehensive overview of why International Women’s Day still matters. The upshot is that while the last century […] More »

The It Gets Better Project—the hugely popular series of videos kicked off by advice columnist Dan Savage a few weeks ago in response to a series of high-profile suicides by gay teens—got a contribution this week from a group of queer Canadian celebrities. The slickly edited video above gathers the stories of more than 30 […] More »

Last spring, Dockers launched its stupefying ad campaign based around the core message of “Wear The Pants.” (In a move that nicely reinforced the tone-deaf idiocy of the campaign, it premiered on International Women’s Day, March 8. Classy.) The whole series, which is still running in a slightly diluted form, rests on the premise that there […] More »

This falls into the “this is a good thing to know,” as opposed to the “this is definitely good news (!),” category. The Bechdel Test is a quick and dirty way to gauge the sexism of a movie, invented 25 years ago by Alison Bechdel, the cartoonist and writer of Dykes to Watch Out For. A […] More »