British filmmaker Amma Asante once said: “Don’t take no as a full stop, treat it like a comma.” Three women indie filmmakers (Bonnie Anderson, Moxie Productions; Rabiya Mansoor and Shreya Patel, Window Dreams Productions) are doing just that. These filmmakers aren’t asking for a seat at patriarchy’s table. They’re building a better one on their own.

Film has always been a brutal industry for everyone but women bear a disproportionate brunt of the pain. A 2021 report by Women in View found women were afforded significantly fewer film contracts than men by two major funders and far less funding. BIPOC women fared the worst. A story in World Economic Forum in March reported that while the MeToo movement uncovered gender power dynamics in Hollywood, inequities behind the scenes garnered less attention: fewer than 20% of directors and writers of the 250 highest-grossing U.S. movies were women (according to a recent study). It isn’t lack of education that holds women back – a 2018 report found equal representation of women in higher education in film and television.

Indie Film Making: The Road to Freedom?

While building one’s own company doesn’t make systemic oppression and challenges vanish, the autonomy that comes with going indie provides film makers with the freedom to produce content that matters to them, their way, and in ways that aligned with their feminist ideals. Moxie Productions’ Anderson recalled an incident where a male actor ignored her – even though she was director and producer, and looked to her male Director of Photography instead. She hasn’t hired him again. For the keepers though, she provides a work experience “I wasn’t finding in other places.” She loves hearing how working on her set is fun. “I want everybody to have that feeling when they’re on set because that’s when you get the best work done.”

India is a country where tradition and modernity continue to collide and clash. The government, and those who fight for progress  work hard to increase gender equity and equality. However, financial independence is a critical enabler in the advancement of women’s equity and equality in India. Given the grim situation today, financial independence seems miles away from being a possibility for India’s women.

Here are some of the reasons why:

Education is discouraged

Education offers the best opportunity for women to find employment, provided it continues to be encouraged. Since 2010, India has provided free education for every child until 14 However, not being compulsory, children have the right to education but not the obligation. Many girls do not find themselves in classrooms because their parents prefer to educate their sons. Girls are forced to help with housework. Women have persisted against all odds, and are now getting an education, and a way to becoming financially independent.  With this change, the term ‘gender equality’ has grown increasingly popular in recent years. However, there is a significant number of people here who are unable to distinguish between gender equality and gender equity. Gender equality refers to outcomes that are equal for all genders. Gender equity acknowledges that women and persons of different genders do not have the same ‘starting position’ as men.

Cultural barriers to independence

We in India endorse the ‘Educate the Girl, Save the Girl’ campaign. Yet, sadly, a university degree is nothing more than a piece of paper used to entice a suitable groom. Many are educated with the sole purpose of getting husbands, not to join the workforce. In Gujarat, I visited a few marriage bureaus.  It came as no surprise to learn that upper-middle-class families prefer a female who is well-educated, but willing to leave her job (which requires commitment and time) after marriage. Allowances are made if you want to work from home, but it’s usually to create the impression that the ladies are suitably engaged. If a boy comes from a middle-class home, he is receptive to marrying a working lady, but not at the expense of housework. They’re aware that for any woman to perform both duties well without assistance is challenging. It’s best for all if the woman is a full-time housewife.  Thus, many educated women who could be national treasures are staying at home, which leads to dependence on husbands for the rest of their lives.

Cleaning jobs and similar low-paid jobs are considered menial and do not provide women with dignity. It’s a point of contention whether women who are highly paid receive more respect. In 1972, Ela Bhatt started The Self-Employed Women’s Association https://sewabharat.org – SEWA. The name means ‘service’ in numerous Indian languages. It is an Indian trade union founded in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, that advocates for the rights of low-wage, self-employed women. With over 1.6 million participating women, SEWA is the largest organization of  informal workers in the world. SEWA is based on the idea of complete employment, through which a woman can provide food, health care, childcare, and a safe place to live for her family. This stellar organization has transformed innumerable women’s lives. Giving them what women need most – financial freedom.

We’re back with our Rabble Round up and this month we’re sharing our favourite election coverage from one of our favourite Canadian indie publications. 

On the list: the climate crisis, what unions want and why we might want to consider shifting away from national security and towards human safety. 

Check out our roundup here!

Five reasons to ditch anti-terrorism and national security

In this article Anne Dagenais discusses why we must move away from the conversation about national security and towards human safety.

“While the threat to civil liberties has only grown over the last 20 years, recent events have led to renewed concern: the push for the adoption of new domestic terrorism laws in the United States, the expansion of the Terrorist Entities List in Canada, the ever-growing definition of “national security,” and endless increases to the powers and resources of national security agencies,” she says.

“Governments attempt to justify their actions in the name of “security,” but none actually go to the root causes of the violence they purport to address.

“What we need is to shift away from national security — the preservation of the sovereignty and thus the power of the state — towards human safety — the condition of individuals being empowered and free from want and harm.”

A first-time voter’s guide to the 2021 Canadian Election

“As the country heads into a pandemic election, knowing how to vote, where to cast your ballot, and voting safely are more important than ever for first-time voters,” Stephen Wentzell writes in this article.

“The other battle is deciding who to vote for.” 

Rabble.ca’s first-time voter guide covers everything you need to know, from how to vote, voting strategically, and where your vote fits. 

What Canada’s unions want from this election

The Canadian Labour Congress has a plan for a post-pandemic recovery focused on workers. An interview with the president of the CLC, Bea Bruske, discusses how this election will help with that recovery. Listen to it here. 

Climate change on the campaign trail

In this rabble.ca podcast episode, climate and housing activist, and former NDP candidate herself, Diana Yoon talks about how the issue of climate change is playing out in this election. Listen to the podcast episode here.

Leaders’ debate inadequately addresses climate change

“While the climate crisis was featured among the six debate topics, it continues to be presented politically as an issue on its own, rather than something that is intersectional and crucially informs other issues like the economy and health care,” Stephen Wentzell writes in this article.

“The lack of details and specifics on offer last night on the questions on the increasingly hard-to-ignore climate crisis brings into question how, exactly, party leaders will prioritize climate justice in their platforms.”

To know more about how party leaders addressed the climate crisis in the Leaders’ debate, continue reading the rabble.ca article here.

I don’t remember 9/11. 

Maybe that’s because I was a Canadian toddler, rather than American, or was just too young — but opening to the first story in Everything On (The) Line: 20 Years of Social Movement Stories from rabble.ca I am transported back by the moving words of Monia Mazigh and Barâa Arar, mother and daughter of Maher Arar, a Syrian-Canadian who was arrested on September 26, 2002. 

This transportive ability — to travel back in time and to live something you have a different memory of — is the primary accomplishment of rabble.ca’s  compilation of stories from the last twenty years. 

rabble.ca is an independent, nonprofit  award winning left wing media outlet with 1M unique readers annually worldwide, based in Vancouver (original territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations). They aim to extend and amplify the work of social movements and front-line activists in Canada.  

Everything On (The) Line is a collection of stories, but also the fossilized voices of journalists and activists during high-intensity moments in Canadian politics. Editors S. Reuss and Christina Turner have unearthed articles from rabble’s archives which capture the concerns and opinions of the activists, feminists, and fighters before us —concerns that still exist today. 

The articles speak from Indigenous rights to climate change; personal accounts of protests and violence; outrage and critique for the government. The collection focuses on the personal lives of Canadian citizens impacted by these threats, while also panning out to inspect the governments of the early 2000’s, tying traumas from the violent injustices occurring around the world together: uniting pain but also hope across two decades. 

The aim of the collection is not only to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Rabble, but to allow the past and present to converse; articles from 2001 in tandem with essays from 2020. 

It is an opportunity for readers to “reflect on the social movements that challenged capitalism, racism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy over the past two decades.” (5)

Readers hear the personal stories from Monia Mazigh and Barâa Arar, to personal accounts of when Black Lives Matter Toronto turned the Pride Parade into a protest. Words from protestors of the G8 Summit burn with anger still, 19 years later. 

In her piece “What Do We Want and Where Are We Headed?” Pamela Palmater expresses how “ultimately, we want to be free to govern ourselves as we choose; free to enjoy our identities, cultures, languages, and traditions; free to live the good life as we see fit.” (129) This desire for freedom and respect echoes throughout the twenty-four pieces in the book. 

Anger and fear and distrust bubble up within these essays. 

Amber Dean writes about attending Robert Pickton’s trial in 2007 for the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe, and Georgina Papin — asking how colonization can be over when the violence persists?

Michael Stewart picks apart the Harper government’s inability to “cope with the tender, patient, ironclad solidarity of Indigenous people in Canada.” 

Murray Dobbin asked in 2009 how the government would face their denial and complacency in the face of crisis. 

All are systemic issues still present today; the final section with pieces from 2015-2020 carry ghostly echoes of the first section from 2001-2005. This disturbing parallel calls for transformative justice, addressed by Walters and Zellars in their 2020 essay on abolishing the police and collective care. They call this turbulent time an “[opportunity] for reflection and growth [which] must be central to our abolitionist imaginings” and to “have the courage to dream, try, fail, try again, and fail better.” (173) 

The collection also contains new essays from esteemed writers such as Nora Loreto. In her piece “Real Change Meets Radical Tactics” Loreto traces the resurgence of feminist action in recent years, raising the point that “for what remains of the mainstream feminist movement, the dominant frame is still firmly white. Whiteness obscures the fact that women do not experience systemic violence in the same way. It creates a tent so large that feminism becomes a matter of self-identity […] feminism has become slippery and toothless.” (145) This comment spoke to me as a reader, as a feminist, and as a member of LiisBeth, because whiteness is a barrier in the feminist organizations I see and participate in. 

LiisBeth’s masthead is primarily (some queer) white women; “Everything On (The) Line” was compiled by two white women; LiisBeth partners with rabble.ca’s, putting together a monthly roundup. A white, queer woman is writing this review, the last in a funnel of white voices. 

That being said, 35 per cent of LiisBeth’s contributors are women of colour and over 50 per cent of the articles written in the last year featured enterprises and projects founded or operated by women of colour, queer women and trans folk.  

When rabble.ca was founded, a UNECE study found 40 per cent of journalists in Canada were women, and 97 per cent of journalists across all media were white, according to a study done by Laval University in 2000. This statistic from Laval University, as well as the point that there was (and still is) no current study to compare this data to, was mentioned in a rabble.ca piece in 2016 by Joanna Chu titled “The face of Canadian Journalism is still white — and it’s time to push back.” 

The collection spurs questions and invites reflection not just on the state of our world, but also journalism — those who wrote before us and how future writers will curate, cultivate and uplift all voices. 

It’s an opportunity to see how far we have come, but also look at where we still need to go. 

Everything On (The) Line is not perfect, because history is not perfect. What we glean from these reverberations of rallying voices is that the next twenty years should be equally as action-packed, as fueled by the desire for change. We should read about and reach for change, as the voices of rabble.ca have. 

The fifth section of the collection is titled “Activism and Indie Media: Pasts and Futures”, where publisher Kim Elliot and Mathew Adams call rabble.ca a bridge for the social movement, and reflect on how the launch of rabble.ca in 2001 gave them the focus of “[amplifying] the voices of resistance struggles and movement-focused news.” 

Hopefully, Everything On (The) Line can be the bridge to the past that lays the foundation for the next twenty years of rabble.ca.

There are a lot of ways to experience music, but TikTok is one of the weirdest – especially when it comes to trends. If you are anything like me, you have gone months giggling over a snippet of a trending song before listening to the whole thing – if you ever get around to listening to it at all. It is an absolute trip when you finally hear the entirety of a song that you both know intimately well and not at all.

So this is LiisBeth giving you that experience ten times over. We hope you enjoy listening to the full version of ten of our favorite trending TikTok songs.

Yucky Blucky Fruitcake  — Iamdoechii

What better way to kick off our TikTok playlist than with the iconic introductory track Yucky Blucky Fruitcake gifted to us by Iamdoechii? On TikTok this song is often used to show off transformations – whether it’s weight loss, a post-high school glow up, or the journey from positive pregnancy test to newborn baby. Perhaps more than any other song on this list, Yucky Blucky Fruitcake is a reminder that TikTok trends barely scratch the surface of a full song. Iamdoechii skillfully weaves several genres and musical styles together and lyrically presents a detailed description of her personality and history, proving her complexity as a musical artist and person in one fell swoop. Yucky Blucky Fruitcake has a quirky sense of humor, fun pop culture references, and will reward your undivided attention.

Track Star  — Mooski 

Track Star has three main trends associated with it: the dance, people running (often at track meets), and a game of hide and go seek where you set your phone to count down and try to hide before it takes a photo. In the full track, Mooski’s syrupy vocals lament his partner’s tendency to run away from problems instead of communicating. The whole song is great, but the minimalist bridge is especially good. Perfectly mixed, percussive, and smooth, Track Star is a solid start to Mooski’s music career.

MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)  — Lil Nas X

Okay, so chances are good that you heard Montero all the way through before it started circulating on TikTok. Currently on its third consecutive week at the top of the Billboard Global Charts, Montero is the deliciously gay follow-up to Old Town Road that we could never have dreamed was on the horizon back in 2019. Peppy, flirtatious, and oh-so-thirsty, Montero doesn’t have a definitive trend associated with it yet – unless you count queer thirst traps as a trend. Which, come to think of it, why not? We’re here for it.

Day ’N’ Nite  — Kid Cudi 

“Now look at this” is by far the most popular Day ‘N’ Nite trend, although the song is also a popular backing track for the trend where you type a message in two colors and turn off the lights halfway through the video – this renders half of the text invisible, which usually inverts the original message. Kid Cudi, who wrote the song at a tough time in his life, briefly made headlines for his complicated reaction to people using this song comedically. Personally, I think that’s all the more reason to listen to the full track. It’s a good one for late-night drives, so throw that baby on repeat and enjoy Cudi’s company one of these nights.

Praying  — Kesha 

The trend behind Praying utilizes Kesha’s jaw-dropping high note (an F6 for those of you keeping track) near the end of this inspirational ballad. Often coupled with the MegaMouth filter, this trend is a hilarious way to indicate an overdramatic response to a situation. Even Kesha took a stab at the trend, reliving the awkward red-carpet moment in which Jerry Seinfeld refused to give her a hug. The memeability of the song does not detract from its power. Written after her long battle to free herself from her abusive producer Dr. Luke, this is an anthem full of anger, forgiveness, and self-love. Get ready to be inspired to fight another day.

deja vu  — Olivia Rodrigo 

deja vu is the most common backing track to videos playing with the inversion filter. The current trend is split in two: some users toggle the video back and forth to highlight the symmetry of their own facial features while others use it to highlight the physical similarities of siblings or other family members. deja vu is a 10/10 pop song: dirty, beachy guitars; lyrical, breathy vocals; a surprisingly prominent drumline; and a relatable break-up complaint. How dare your ex do the same old things with their new person and pretend those things are unique or special?

Moon (And It Went Like)  — Kid Francescoli 

This track is the current fave to play behind slide shows of vacations, adventures, and gorgeous photo shoots. Often starting off with a lip sync to the titular line, there is no denying that this track perfectly accompanies any set of memories. The full song doesn’t deviate far from what you’ve already heard: it is mostly instrumental and is sentimental and peppy. At six and a half minutes long, this song is ideal to chill out to while you’re making the memories that you’ll eventually upload to TikTok.

bury a friend  — Billie Eilish 

With a song as rich as bury a friend, it’s not surprising that there are a few trends to choose from. My personal favorite is the spooky, Eilish-inspired back bend, but people also use the Neon Twin effect to creepily stare themselves down or use the song to showcase a makeup transformation. The full song is well-worth a listen, with a surprisingly saccharine introduction, innovative percussive choices, and the quintessentially creepy Eilish sound. Screeching, chittering sound effects, whispery vocals – the whole nine yards.

Levitating  — Dua Lipa 

Levitating is also mostly used to comedic effect. The call and response of “You want me!” / “I want you baby!” makes for the perfect vehicle for TikTokers to simp over their favorite characters, poke fun at bad relationship choices, or make jokes about wanting things that they shouldn’t want. Outside of the jokes, though, Levitating is a great pop song. Fun, bouncey, and a verified mood-booster, this a song you can’t help but sing along to. With any luck we’ll all be playing this one beach side this summer.

Hope  — Twista and Faith Evans 

Hope is another comedy trend. The video begins with the TikToker showcasing their hopes for the day and then – just as Faith Evans hits the words “I’m hopeful” – the video freezes and a list of everything that the TikToker did to procrastinate pops up on the screen. This is an older song, but if you have not heard the whole thing, you should. Faith Evans’ sweeping, gospel vocals and Twista’s highly personal rap come together to make an emotionally charged song that will inspire you to do better and be better.

Let us know if you think these songs hold up as full tracks or if we should have left them in the world of 60 seconds or less! We hope you dig the playlist as much as we did.

In our roundup this month, we’re sharing content from Rabble that looks at different themes, ideas, and conversations that feminists are engaging in right now. As a feminist, womxn’s entrepreneurship publication, we’re interested in what the feminist movement—and the action resulting from it—looks like at the moment. Here are our top picks for Rabble content that dive into this.

The many burdens of women’s work 

In this interview, Chelsea Nash writes: “Do women benefit in the workplace from assimilating into the male-dominated culture, or from resisting it? Put another way, is it better to focus on the similarities between men and women workers, or to point out gendered differences and vocalize the ways women don’t fit — literally and figuratively — into many non-traditional workplaces?”

These are the questions that biologist and ergonomist Karen Messing tries to answer in her new book, Bent Out of Shape: Shame, Solidarity, and Women’s Bodies at Work, coming out April 5 from Between the Lines.

Investing in a feminist economic recovery

So what is a feminist recovery? 

Through a deep dive into the work of Anjum Sultana, the national director of public policy and strategic communications for YWCA, Maya Bhullar writes about how a feminist recovery plan that is multifaceted and intersectional, focusing on the diverse needs of women, two-spirit, and gender-diverse people, is the starting point of the change the needed to address those who are often marginalized, especially during the global pandemic.

Trudeau is all words and no action on male violence against women

“April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and while there has been plenty of awareness this year, there remains precious little government action on ending the scourge of male violence against women and children, both at home and globally,” Matthew Behrens writes.

Since 1961, over 10,000 women have been victims of femicide in Canada. At the same time, spokespersons for male-dominated institutions like the military and the police are increasingly using the “Trudeau-esque language of acknowledging the failures to end violence against women as the standard response for failing to do anything about it.”

Behrens says it’s easy for men to be applauded for declaring that something must be done to end male violence, but such words ring hollow amidst the dearth of accountability mechanisms and system change required to ensure transformational change.