"Reasonable Accommodation: A Feminist Response"

A statement from the Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Concordia University, challenging the moral legitimacy of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission:

As anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminists in Québec, we have serious misgivings about the Commission de Consultation sur les pratiques d'accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles. The Conseil du statut de la femme du Québec (CSF) has proposed that the Québec Charter be changed so as to accord the right of gender equality relative priority over the right to religious expression and to ban the wearing of "ostentatious" religious symbols in public institutions by public employees. Our concern is that the Commission and the CSF's subsequent intervention pave the way for legislation that will restrict rather than enhance the rights of women. We invite you to join us in questioning the exclusionary structure of the Commission, the assumptions it supports, and the negative impact it is likely to have on women's lives.

So, why call into question the legitimacy and the effects of the Commission?

1. because although we see the urgent need for dialogue about racism and sexism in Québec society, we object to how this consultation process has been undertaken. Listening to people "air out" their racism is not conducive to promoting critical reflection and dialogue, but instead creates a climate of fear-mongering and moral panic. Furthermore, in asking whether or not "difference" and "minorities" should be accommodated the commission assumes and perpetuates "commonsense" racist understandings of some "cultures" as homogeneous, backward and inferior. In addition, the Commission's reliance on the notion of "reason" must also be critically examined. Historically, white men have been positioned as the exclusive bearers of reason, and the Commission runs the risk of reproducing this in a context of ongoing social inequality.

2. because the design of the Commission and the language of "accommodation" assumes and perpetuates a system of power whereby western "hosts" act as gatekeepers for non-western "guests." A better consultative process would start with the recognition that Canada is a white-settler state, and that its history is one of colonial and patriarchal violence against Indigenous people.

3. because the public debates that the Commission has sparked construct certain ethno-cultural communities as perpetual outsiders and as threats to Québec identity rather than as integral to it. Concerns about ethno-cultural others as socially regressive obscure the everyday homophobia, sexism and racism that pervade Québec society.

4. because the ways that the Commission has been represented in mainstream English media promotes the idea that racism is a feature exclusive to Québec society and is not a problem -- or is less of a problem -- in the rest of Canada.

5. because the preoccupation with veiled women serves to deflect from the sexism and racism that has historically pervaded Québec and Canadian society. As feminists, we must challenge our complicity with the state's violence against women both in its colonial relations with Indigenous people and in its use of the figure of the veiled woman as an alibi for imperialist war and occupation in Afghanistan.

6. because appeals to secularism as a guarantor of gender equality effectively function to promote Christian culture as the norm and to scapegoat Muslims as inherently sexist, erasing secular forms of sexism.

7. because although it is still underway, the Commission has already prompted the proposal of laws that could restrict, regulate, and otherwise impede the lives of immigrant and racialized people in Québec.

8. because regulating women's public religious expression is gender discrimination insofar as it takes away women's freedom and inhibits their civic participation.

9. because the CSF is failing to meet its mandate of "defending the interests of women." The CSF would better serve the interests of women in Québec by focusing on the conditions of poverty, violence, criminalization and racism that many of us face, and not on what women wear.

Signed: The Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University, November 2007

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Please go to the Institute's website (above) to read the full version of the statement.

To personally endorse this statement, kindly write to: acarastathis@gmail.com.

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For another view on the matter, please go to Little Miss Brightside's blog.

The Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Accommodation Practices: When racism and misogyny go hand in hand...

It's no secret that the Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d'accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles (aka la Commission Bouchard-Taylor) is nothing but a gross, useless and costly farce, which, instead of fostering genuine and thorough consultation of the Québec population and meaningful debate, serves as a soap box on which xenophobic urbanites and hateful small-town folks alike can bash "immigrants" and "foreigners" (i.e. those among us who are not White, Catholic and French-speaking) in total impunity.

I must acknowledge that, hopefully, a few reasonable people have also taken the stand, either to denounce the ridiculousness of it all, the incompetence and arrogance of the Commissioners, and the ignorance and hypocrisy underlying extremist point of views, or to express their support for a liberal, secular, egalitarian, feminist and culturally inclusive society.

On the other hand, I was quite surprised by the number of people who took the stand to say that they missed the good old days when the Catholic Church effectively ruled la Belle Province. In other words, those people only want a secular state as long as other religions are concerned; and if it were up to them, they would reinstate Catholicism as Québec's official religion.

For instance, Jean Tremblay, mayor of Saguenay, went to the Commission to read out a mémoire in which he argued that the Québec government should consult the Catholic Church before making any decision having to do with "moral matters", and that abortion is murder and should be legally considered as such.

(Subsequently, Mayor Tremblay was publicly criticized by city councillors for presenting his personal opinion as the official position of the municipal council. Many citizens also asked for his resignation, because of his extreme religious views.)

Another trend among the intervenors at the Commission was to blame - uh hum... guess who's to blame again? - Québec women for the so-called "accommodation problems". Basically, the reasoning is as follows:

• Québec women selfishly work and have a life of their own instead of making babies by the dozen;
• Québec's birthrate has plummeted for the few past decades;
• Québec has allegedly been welcoming more immigrants lately to compensate for the gap that this lower birthrate has created in the workforce;
• immigrants are more noticeable these days because there are much more of them than before;
• since immigrants, who are not necessarily White, Catholic and French-speaking, have formed new minority communities all over Québec, the Québecois majority naturally feels threatened by them (not to mention ripped of its oppressed minority victim ideology);
• thus, if Québec women had more babies of their own, that is, good, Catholic, White and French-speaking babies, we would not need that many immigrants around.

Consequently, many people have suggested before the Commission - on national TV - that the Québec government implement new measures in order to boost the birthrate of its Québécois citizens.

If you've thought of tax credits for new families, better parental leave policies, or a better and cheap daycare and education system, you're wrong.

The good answer was: strip everybody of their right to vote. Then redistribute it only to Québecois who have married an procreated. (Oh, and the more babies you have, the more votes you get to cast...)

Seriously. I'm not making this up. Watch the Commission's tour and see for yourself.

Or not. It gets really depressing with time...