On December 1st 2012, Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter held their annual Montreal Massacre Memorial event at the Vancouver Public Library. This event remembers the 14 women who were murdered on December 6, 1989 in Montreal by a man, simply because they were women. The event also seeks to address the fact that violence against women is systemic and happens within a context of a patriarchy culture and to take action against that system.
In this episode we hear excerpts from a panel discussion called: Pornifying Violence Against Women. The name of the panel was inspired by photos discovered of an RCMP officer this past year depicting scenes of violence against women, some of which were disturbingly similar to reports of what happened at the Pickton farm.
Speakers on the panel are: Hilla Kerner (facilitator), a collective member at Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter, Suzanne Jay of Asian Coalition Ending Prostitution, Lisa Steacy, a collective member at Vancouver Rape Relief, Carissa Ropponen of WAVAW (Women Against Violence Against Women), Lierre Keith, a founding member of the group Stop Porn Culture, Janine Benedet, associate professor in the faculty of law at the University of British Columbia, Meghan Murphy, founder & editor of Feminist Current, Trisha Baptie, a formerly prostituted woman and the founder of EVE (Formerly Exploited Voices Now Educating), journalist Laura Robinson, Summer-Rain Bentham, a collective member at Vancouver Rape Relief, and Shani, a survivor of prostitution and a member of LaCles, coalition against sexual exploitation.
You can listen to an edited version of that discussion here:
