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Anti-Oppression: Theory and Practice

On Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019, Karen B.K. Chan was at UCalgary helping us to understand buzzwords and what they really mean (e.g., racialization, privilege, decolonization, ableism, normativity, transphobia, internalization, harm reduction, mad pride, genderqueer) and apply skills to real-life scenarios to work across difference.

From Guilt to Love

Chan returned on Friday, Feb. 15 with another presentation addressing how when guilt is a major motivation for our actions, we can end up exhausted, resentful, and unfulfilled. Knowing where our guilt patterns come from is part of the way out of this habit, and there are other skills and practices we can do to increase our tolerance for an overactive guilt response.

Sex as Improv

On Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, Karen B.K. Chan was at UCalgary to ask: does sex feel formulaic sometimes? Do you just stick to what works? Her workshop helps manage the uncertainty of new experiences, the fear of not being perfect and the creativity required to change it up. Through discussion, reflection and fun exercises, you can expand your sexual vocabulary and flip the old scripts you're tired of.

Karen B. K. Chan is an award-winning sex and emotional literacy educator in Toronto, Canada, with 20+ years of experience. Karen (aka BK) is dedicated to having difficult conversations that are real, transformative and kind.

Known for her accessible style and sense of humour, BK integrates curriculum content into stories, and theory into practice. She works with individuals, groups, and organizations, and trains professionals across disciplines.
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BK’s YouTube video Jam is used as a teaching resource internationally, and her chapter on the importance of creative play was part of the AASECT 2014 Book of the Year. BK's work has also appeared in Toronto Book Award finalist Any Other Way (Coach House 2017), Sexology International, the Tete-a-Tete, and Action Canada's national education manual. In 2014, BK was named "Service Provider of the Year" by Planned Parenthood of Toronto for her work in sexual health, and she was honoured in 2017 as one of 30 Chinese Canadian women of distinction in Ontario.

BK has training in creative facilitation, productive thinking, non-violent communication, and is a facilitator for YES!, which hosts intensive gatherings for social change-makers worldwide. These influences, and more, shaped her favourite ways to learn and teach: through stories, metaphors, diagrams, and things that make people laugh.

Deconstructing and Moving Past Sexualized Violence

On Monday, March 4, 2019, Carla Bertsch and Kevin Vowles led a discussion of the root causes of sexualized violence, including victim blaming, gender expectations and social learning mechanisms. Building consent culture, partying safety, bystander intervention techniques and deconstructing culture that leads to misogyny and objectification of women, participants were guided on a gender-transformative journey. Galvanized to action, participants left motivated to create and maintain safe spaces in their social lives that can lead us into a world free from sexual violence.

Carla Bertsch is the University of Calgary’s inaugural sexual violence support advocate. As a registered social worker with professional experience working in domestic and sexual violence, education and mental health, Carla brings an intersectional, trauma-informed perspective to her role championing the needs and rights of anyone affected by sexual violence. 

Whether she’s providing confidential consultation, advocating for accommodations or just being there to listen, Carla promises a safe space where people of all genders, sexualities and backgrounds can find the support they need.

Since being appointed in 2017, Carla has delivered more than 75 workshops on various topics including sexual violence, prevention, consent, gender equity and socialization. On a national scale, Carla co-founded the first-ever Western Canada Community of Practice, a group of 12 post-secondary institutions dedicated to cultivating the future of sexual violence prevention in higher education.

Kevin Vowles speaks authentically and openly about identifying as gender-fluid and the social isolation experienced growing up, not fitting into gendered expectations, amidst violence and cultures of hyper-masculinity.  Kevin speaks passionately about the need to address gender-based violence through building emotional intelligence, consent culture and deconstructing gender.  In doing this, violence against not only women and girls can be prevented, but also against men and boys. 

Kevin has 15 years' experience as an educational practitioner and is a seasoned public health promotion and violence prevention professional.  Kevin has worked as an employee and consultant for award-winning violence prevention programs such as SWOVA's Respectful Relationships program and organizations such as White Ribbon.

Kevin has contributed as an author to the creation of several curricula, including Internet Safety, Peace Kids & Respectful Relationships (SWOVA), Walking in Her Moccasins (Congress of Aboriginal Peoples), and Engaging Men and Boys to End Violence in the Family (Canadian Council of Muslim Women). Kevin has done professional development for the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, the British Columbia Teachers Federation, and worked with sports teams at the professional and university level.  Kevin has been a standing committee member of the Canadian Women's Foundation Teen Healthy Relationship Granting Committee since 2012.

Queering Religion – A Look at Faith, Inclusivity, and Leadership

On Tuesday, March 12, 2019 Pam Rocker invited us into reflection and conversation on how we can create space for everyone, bring healing to systemic injustices, and celebrate the sacred connections between us all. 

Buzzwords like 'inclusivity' and 'diversity' abound, yet the tangible actions behind them often go unexplored. Religion at large has imposed artificial binaries that have fractured our sense of kinship and belonging, especially for LGBTQ2S+ people and other communities who have been considered antithetical to genuine faith.

Community leaders at their best can offer the imagination and grounding values needed to lead us beyond policies and into vital movement work. But how do we get there? What does it look and feel like?

This event was part of Pluralism and Religious Diversity Week.

Pam Rocker is an atypical activist, award-winning writer, spoken word poet, musician and speaker. She co-founded a queer feminist ukulele comedy band that performed for many years, including opening for Margaret Cho, and now writes and performs solo, bringing subjects from lesbian stereotypes, menstruation, and queer anthems. Pam has also been involved in the Theatre and Arts community in Calgary, partnering with theatre companies to produce and host queer and feminist performances. Her play, heterophobia, was recently made into a music video to the song “Don’t Ever Look Back” by Canadian band Shred Kelly.

Pam is most well-known for bridging the imposed binaries of queer and faith identities, by working alongside faith leaders and communities who want to become more affirming, and working with queer folks who desire to practice their faith and to live in the fullness of their identity. She has been doing this work for almost a decade. She is currently director of Affirming Connections, the organizations that fosters values of advocacy, affirmation and activism within the faith communities and in Calgary.

Recently, she was chosen as one of Calgary's Top 40 Under 40.

Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure

This event took place on Thursday, March 21, 2019 with Barbara J. Risman

Are today's young adults gender rebels or returning to tradition? In Where the Millennials Will Take Us, Barbara J. Risman reveals the diverse strategies youth use to negotiate the ongoing gender revolution. Using her theory of gender as a social structure, Risman analyzes life history interviews with a diverse set of Millennials to probe how they understand gender and how they might change it. Some are true believers that men and women are essentially different and should be so. Others are innovators, defying stereotypes and rejecting sexist ideologies and organizational practices. Perhaps new to this generation are gender rebels who reject sex categories, often refusing to present their bodies within them and sometimes claiming genderqueer identities. And finally, many youths today are simply confused by all the changes swirling around them. 

As a new generation contends with unsettled gender norms and expectations, Risman reminds us that gender is much more than an identity; it also shapes expectations in everyday life, and structures the organization of workplaces, politics, and, ideology. To pursue change only in individual lives, Risman argues, risks the opportunity to eradicate both gender inequality and gender as a primary category that organizes social life.

This event was sponsored by Department of Sociology, Department of Philosophy, Women’s Studies Program, Faculty of Arts, Calgary Institute for the Humanities and Werklund School of Education, and Ask First 2: Challenging Attitudes & Beliefs, an SU Quality Money Project.

Barbara J. Risman is Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition, editor of Families as They Really Are, and a forthcoming Handbook on Gender (co-edited with Carissa Froyum and William Scarborough).