A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Man, the intensity of the on-line commentary under my column last Friday made me realize that sexual assault is still a sizzling, completely misunderstood issue out there. I think there's a solid contingent of people who seriously believe that rape is in the nature of men, and that women "ask for it" when they dress or act a certain way. Really? That's a pretty discouraging realization for me.  Turns out April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, so here's more fuel to the fire: A piece in Salon laying out some frightening statistics around the incidence of rape on U.S. campuses. 

Women still wearing the blame for rape A young Saanich woman was allegedly kidnapped and sexually assaulted last week. Police were in the media soon after warning women to take more care. Yes, 40 years after “women’s liberation,” sexual assault is still our fault. Women’s issues were a bit of a darling in the media industry when I first got into journalism in the early ‘80s as a “women’s page” reporter. So I wrote a lot about the kinds of things that were considered women’s issues at that time. They ran the gamut, from jam-making and wedding dresses to abortion, rape and sexual harassment. There were some pretty heavy issues on the table at the time, and I’m glad to say that several are history now. When I started out reporting, a husband in Canada couldn’t even be charged with raping his wife, because there was no such offence. Sexual harassment had barely even been conceptualized. Hospital boards were being ripped apart by the abortion issue.   All of that has changed. But the ...

Let's hope somebody is blushing in the United Church and at BC Housing after learning that their spokespeople are making insulting and  poorly considered comments about the risks to women at some of the co-ed shelters in the Downtown Eastside.

Just recently back from two wonderful weeks in one of my favourite countries, Mexico. Various acquaintances asked me many times before I left whether I felt safe there, and I've heard the same question many times since my return. I find that so very strange - that the same weird and tragic things that happen in all the countries of the world happen every day in Canada, too,  yet we interpret them to mean that those other countries are wildly unpredictable and dangerous places to travel compared to Canada. OK, Ciudad de Juarez isn't on my travel itinerary for the near future, but I've never felt in danger anywhere in Mexico after 16 years of travelling to various towns and cities there, including Mexico City. It's a lovely country full of gentle, family-oriented people, and they're a heck of a lot friendlier to strangers passing through than most of the population in Greater Victoria. I've had to readjust my public smiley face now that I'm home, as I'd ...

Families First - sloganeering or something real? As the pundits have already noted, the new premier’s “Families First” platform is wide open to interpretation at this point. So we’ll see where things go in the months ahead. But let’s at least take a moment to celebrate that a B.C. premier even thought families were important enough to be the focus of her leadership. It’s a cliché that it has to be a woman premier making the point, and a shame that we don't yet know whether she could win an election on the same platform. But it’s still a good sign when the most prominent message coming out of the new premier’s office is about putting families first. Families were never something Gordon Campbell talked about much. Search the Hansard debates and you’ll see that. I always got the feeling that they just didn’t cross his mind; he loves his own family, of course, but it never seemed to me that he saw any role for the province in building stronger families overall. That’s a cliché in it...

I've been wanting to read more about what life is like for people in northern Japan now that we're a week and a half into the post-earthquake period. I managed to find a half-decent blog that at least has some current news, but it's striking how quickly the world news has turned into stories either solely about the nuclear facilities, or country-centric stories about "what this means to us" (radiation drifting across the sea, food shipments from Japan, are our own nuclear plants safe, etc.) We earthquake-zone dwellers should take a particular interest in the daily lives of people who are 12 days into being homeless, out in the cold, probably hungry and thirsty, possibly quite injured, and still unable to connect with family members lost in the chaos. As this story notes , things will not be normal for people for a very long time post-quake even if the actual quake and tsunami didn't affect them.   What can we learn from this paucity of meaningful news about...

A scarier world, or just more connected? These are apocalyptic times. My youngest daughter and I were talking the other day about whether this nightmare series of international disasters is a harbinger of the end of days, or if it just feels that way now that everybody has a video camera. She's 26, and asked me if the world felt like this -like it was coming apart at the seams -when I was her age. If it was, I wasn't aware of it. Then again, there was no Internet pouring out a steady stream of horrifying images from around the world back then. Not many citizens had video capability, unlike today when almost anyone with a cellphone can capture catastrophes as they happen. Nor were there global platforms like YouTube, or the video appetites of 24hour TV news channels. I'm as captivated by it as anyone, and grateful for the truths that unedited, amateur video can bring to the human conversation. Would Robert Dziekanski's death in the Vancouver airport even be public...

Great event coming up April 30 - Family Connect, a version of the Project Connect event I've done for the street community these past three years, but this time with a focus on the region's poorest families.   Family Connect co-ordinator Mary Gidney could really use some help collecting donations of family items to be handed out to participants that day (they're expecting to see 700 people there, and kids of all ages).  So if you and your co-workers, book-club friends, running group or whoever would like to take on a little side-project, how about a little collection drive for some of the following items? If you can help out in any way, contact Mary at mgidney@shaw.ca. The event is sponsored by the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness in conjunction with Burnside Gorge Community Association and the Victoria Native Friendship Centre. 400 packages of diapers, all sizes   100 packages of baby wipes    100 diaper cream   600 tubes of toothpaste ...

Just in case you haven't had enough of the Japanese quake/tsunami images yet, here's an amazing video clip from  the moment the tsunami hit . Grim reminder of the power of the ocean. 

Who will you trust in the wild-west information age? I’ve been doing bits of some work over the last year for a tough little on-line taskmaster called Demand Media. It’s kind of like working at a digital factory, with writers labouring for a few bucks per piece doing what Demand calls “service journalism.” The work has been enlightening. The role of a Demand writer is to find answers on-line for the many strange questions people ask in Internet searches.  I figured I’d be a natural fit for the work after all these years in journalism. But it’s been much more challenging than I anticipated. In particular, I’ve come to see how difficult it is to assess your sources of information when the only place you can look is on-line. I suspect that’s something we all need to think about more. Traditional media are no longer the dominant source for news. A 2010 survey on the CNN Tech site found 61 per cent of Americans report getting at least some of their news on-line, compared to just 54 per...