Today, Anna attended the annual memorial service for fourteen women murdered in Montreal, for local women murdered since that time, and for women around the world murdered because they were women. This service always touches me. The first memorial services for the Montreal Massacre took place in 1990, my first year at university. I remember participating in those services with a deep knowledge of what was lost with the loss of any young woman’s life.
Today, the urgency of eliminating violence feels absurdly important as I look at a baby girl and wish her for her the best possible life -- free of violence and full of choices.
Anna has attended four feminist events in the first ten weeks of her life. She has met her Member of Parliament, her Premier, and the provincial Minister Responsible for the Status of Women. Two events marked memorials of women who died by violence and efforts to prevent violence. Two events protested cuts to Canadian women’s organizations and the inexcusable gutting of the mandate for federal Status of Women programs.
I sincerely wish Anna was born at a time when women’s equality goals were already achieved (as the Harper government claims them to be). I had hoped that more of the work of achieving equality would be completed before she was born, much as I had hoped that the house would be clean and comfortable and safe. I guess we never accomplish what we set out to do during our pregnancies.
The first question we ask about babies is their sex. The first thing we do is ascribe them a gender and a set of ways of demarcating gender so we know how we’re expected to treat them: pink for girls, blue for boys. Frills for girls, plains for boys. Gentle tickles for girls, roughhouse kisses for boys.
At ten weeks old, Anna has never witnessed violence. She came close at the Public Health office, where our hearts sank to hear a two-year old boy tell his mother, “Wait for me, you idiot.” He did not say it jokingly. It was unbearable to think how he had learned so young to call his mother that or what the future holds for him and the people in his life. I hope that Anna does not have to experience his violence -- or anyone’s -- as she gets older.
At ten weeks old, Anna knows already some of the high expectations placed on girls. I shock myself with how easily, casually, automatically even I reward her for looking pretty and praise her for being “good.” I can only hope that I am as enthusiastic when she uses her voice to express her feelings and needs and that I reward her for her strength and intelligence and independent spirit. I remind myself every day to celebrate the ways she challenges me and the world, since there will be plenty to celebrate as she gets older.
At ten weeks old, Anna has met an amazing number of people who plan to love her like the dickens, and her capacity to accept their love and turn it into all kinds of goodness is incredible.
At ten weeks old, Anna has met dozens of women and men working together to eliminate violence and discrimination against women and others, and I am grateful to them all for the example they set.
