Saskatchewan Christian Feminist Network

International Women's Day Letter- February 12, 2004

A Gated Community, A Gated World

E.Verrette.

The suburbs; a place of conformity:
Rows of identical, unattractive houses
Without a trace of individuality

A society based on routine,
Like a time warp playing the same basic plot
Over and over again.

Families all similar,
A man who leaves punctually after breakfast,
Goes off to an anonymous office somewhere,
Comes home to a ready-made dinner and No Questions Asked.

A wife, a pretty and efficient android,
A perfect housecleaning and childbearing machine:
Remove the faceplate and reveal the human longing-
Longing to escape from the constant routine
Of clean-house watch children.No Questions Asked.

Children, each trained in a child's ways;
Taught to do their homework, to adore candy and despise
Brussel sprouts,broccoli,spinach and artichokes,
That boys don't wear pink and girls don't play with trucks. Yet,
Still weary of the same old routine of 
School-homework-dinner-bed and No Questions Asked.

No place for the misfits, the dreamer, the restless
No place for identity, difference, nothing
No place for the feminist, the homosexual, the environmentalist:
Nothing, but order and method, the memorized routine.
Of | work | home | laundry
Children | cook | clean
School | home | homework, and No Questions Asked. 

Greetings women of the network

A young high school student in honour of international women's day wrote this poem and at first I saw only the negativism of her words but there is hope here.

• There is hope when young women can see and name the things that are wrong for women in our society. They will change this world.
• 
  There is hope when women become involved in working for the women who came to our country illegally, searching for a better world for themselves, searching for freedom.
• 
  There is hope when women struggle and work together and form helping places for other women like Tamara House in Saskatoon and Nellie's house in Toronto.
• 
  There is hope when the 'beauty queen pageants' seem to be on the wane and dinners for Women of Distinction are on the rise.
• 
  There is hope when women read about the oppression of their sisters throughout the world, sit down, pick up their pens and write to those who have the power to make the changes needed.
• 
  There is hope when people read the Gospels with eyes opened to see that it is a story of journeys to justice. And then go out and do likewise.
• 
  There is hope when the media talks about the brains of a female political hopeful rather than the colour of her hair or what she is wearing.

You are invited, in the midst of all the situations in this world that we despair of ever finding solutions for, to use this International Women's Day to name the signs of hope you see in your life, in your mothers, sisters and children's lives and then to work harder to make it so for all women everywhere.

Marilee Iverson, for COG