From Monday, November 25 to Tuesday, December 10, Camosun students, staff, and faculty are invited to participate in a collaborative event being held at both campuses as part of the annual international campaign 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. In Canada, the campaign includes the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women on December 6, which commemorates the 14 women murdered at l’École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1989.
The Camosun event is an initiative of the Camosun College Faculty Association (CCFA)’s Status of Women Committee and is funded through the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC. Camosun Criminal Justice instructor and chair of the Status of Women Committee Eva Silden hopes to raise awareness on gender issues and encourages students to join the event.
“It’s going to be an interactive art display where students can come and do a little bit of learning and participate by thinking about activism and what little steps that they can take to end violence against women,” says Silden, “and they’re also encouraged to put it on paper and help to fill out the art display with these little pieces of paper.”
Bearing in mind that a lot of students at Camosun today were not even born in 1989, Silden emphasizes the importance of making December 6 also a recognition of all the violent events that have taken place since then. She says that student participation is an important part of raising awareness.
“We can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that [gender-based violence] is still very much with us, it’s still very real, and we do need to keep working to educate and to bring people in to some level of activism and awareness where they can no longer be a bystander,” she says.
Silden says that campaigns, especially after MeToo, have been asking people to use their voices and not to allow behaviours like bullying, harassment, or gender-based violence to take place. Still, she thinks it’s unfortunate that some people still view gender equality as a threatening idea.
“I do not think you need to dig too deep to find that [gender equality] is viewed as a zero-sum game,” she says. “So if power is given up over here, by, usually, white men to anyone, they’re going to lose, right? And that’s not okay, that’s not accurate; that’s a very old idea and I think one that we need to sort of work against.”
Silden says that the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report, released last June, contributed to highlighting the extraordinary violence facing Indigenous women in particular.
“Once you know something you can’t unknow it,” says Silden. “So once we know that aboriginal women and girls are targeted and are abused and experience violence and victimization at the highest rates of anyone else in Canada, of any other group, how can we not actively work to reduce that and address that?”
Recognizing how this can be a stressful time in the academic term, Silden hopes for students to participate to the extent that they can. Mostly, she hopes that the event will spread a message of encouragement.
“I would say to anyone—you are not alone, and if you are experiencing violence in your life or if you know someone, you have a friend, a family member, you are not alone,” she says. “There are supports, there are ways to get help. Nobody should have to suffer that.”
See camosun.ca for more information on the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence events.