Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

Dufour, Pascale

Refonder l’État et l’action publique : Les savoirs militants construits autour des mobilisations de la Marche mondiale des femmes de 2010

Hixson-Vulpe, Jack

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME188
THE CANADIAN WAR 
ON QUEERS: NATIONAL 
SECURITY AS SExUAL 
REGULATION
Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile 
Vancouver: ubc Press, 2010
reviewed by jack 
hixson-vulpe
The project of Patrizia Gentile and 
Gary Kinsman in The Canadian 
War on Queers is to “challenge cur-
rent Canadian historiography.” The 
authors aim to make visible and 
provide a “more accurate” account 
of the social and historical context 
in Canada during the latter half of 
the twentieth century. Specifically 
Gentile and Kinsman take up the 
state-sanctioned war on queers in 
Canada, commencing with the Cold 
War era. Engaging a methodology 
of sociology from below, Gentile and 
Kinsman prioritize the narratives and 
words of people affected by national 
security regimes as opposed to priv-
ileging official security documents. 
The authors openly state that their 
work purposefully incorporates 
large quotes of narrative in efforts 
to “disrupt the master narrative of 
heterosexual hegemonic mainstream 
Canadian history by placing the 
social experiences (including the 
resistance) of queers at the centre of 
[their] analysis.” 
The Canadian War on Queers is 
based on interviews with ten lesbians, 
and thirty-six gay and bisexual men. 
The book takes the reader through a 
myriad of experiences, ranging from 
personal accounts from individuals 
who were expelled from the military 
and rcmp, to high-level security jobs 
within the government. The authors 
also make a point of addressing the 
narratives of individuals who were 
outside of governmental agencies 
to illustrate the ways in which 
state-sanctioned surveillance and 
repression interacted with queer 
communities. Gentile and Kinsman 
address these narratives not only 
Gentile and Kinsman, incorporating 
queer rights into a legal framework 
detracts from other political forms 
of organizing. They acknowledge 
many forms of discrimination that 
cannot be stopped through a legal 
framework. Instead, they recognize 
that though queers have gained legal 
representation, there are still many 
others who live under harsh restric-
tion for a myriad of reasons. 
The Canadian War on Queers ap-
proaches history as political, making 
narratives and experiences politically 
relevant today. Implicating the past 
within the contemporary radical 
queer movement highlights present 
day security regimes and struggles 
while contextualizing them within 
a significant past. This overtly po-
litical project brings forward some 
important histories. Still, Gentile 
and Kinsman do not adequately 
engage a more explicit intersectional 
framework. Instead, this particular 
history of the Canadian war on queers 
continues to focus on specific types 
of Canadian queers. While Gentile 
and Kinsman link this work to con-
temporary security regimes, their 
analysis in some ways falls short by 
focusing largely on queers within 
government; the authors limit their 
analysis to certain populations that 
are often over-represented in schol-
arship. This book is an important 
intervention into mainstream studies 
of Canadian historiography. Future 
works could push further by focus-
ing on the different modes of queer 
resistance happening during the Cold 
War security regimes. 
Jack Hixson-Vulpe received his M.A. 
from the University of Toronto in 
Women and Gender Studies and is 
now working towards completing his 
Ph.D. at York University. His academic 
interests include queer reproduction, 
archives, queer subjectivity, and pri-
mary education.
to expose the ways in which queer 
communities were placed under 
surveillance, blackmailed, and placed 
into a position of vulnerability under 
the guise of state and military safety, 
but they also illustrate the multiple 
ways that queer communities acted 
subversively under state security 
regimes. Gentile and Kinsman con-
tribute to the small body of work 
that reframes the position of queers 
within Canadian security regimes 
and history by drawing attention to 
distorted official Canadian Cold War 
historiography, and illustrate how this 
history has “shaped the experiences of 
gay men, lesbian, and others during 
this period.”
In an effort to create a more 
holistic understanding of the Cana-
dian state-sanctioned war on queers, 
Gentile and Kinsman examine the 
interactions between queer com-
munities and state and military 
operations. The book opens with 
an examination of the Cold War era 
of national security campaigns and 
sweeping elimination of gay, lesbian, 
and bisexual employees in the 1950s 
and 1960s. Moving in chronological 
order, Gentile and Kinsman take up 
the 1970s as a burgeoning era for the 
Canadian lesbian and gay movement. 
Here, the authors explore the investi-
gation into gay and lesbian liberation 
organizations. Finally, they take up 
the 1980s and 1990s, and interrogate 
the limits of human rights discourses 
and advances.
Gentile and Kinsman engage these 
eras and the ways in which queer 
communities have come in contact 
with state-sanctioned oppression. 
In the Cold War era, Gentile and 
Kinsman draw attention to the fact 
that the homosexual security scare 
of the 1950s and 1960s was indeed 
created and perpetuated by repressive 
laws enacted by the Canadian govern-
ment, which outlawed homosexual 
sex during this period. As they trace 
the path of Canadian history and the 
impacts on queers, they cite the 1985 
decision to incorporate sexuality as 
a protected class into the Charter 
of Rights and Freedoms as a com-
plicated achievement. According to 


The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation

Breton, Emilie

Jeppeson, Sandra

Kruzynski, Anna

Serrasin, Rachel

Feminisms at the Heart of Contemporary Anarchism in Quebec: Grassroots Practices of Intersectionality

Galipeau, Angela

Aimer

Harrison, Dawnell

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 3 31
Paradoxical or Purposeful Social Policy?” How Ottawa 
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Losing my soul bit by bit
Is a performance.
Like most everything else,
I do it exceedingly poorly.
I may possess an ill-fated
Profession like a whore who
Is bound and tied to survive
From the dollars of hundreds
Of dullard, gold-ringed men.
My essence needs to be restrung
Like a degenerating guitar
Gathering dust the way
A cobweb takes over
A corner lot.
I do believe that vertigo
Has caught me in its
Hurried fists like a 
Firefighter rescuing a child
And making the world
Right again,
If only for a fleeting instant.
Dawnell Harrison was born and raised in Washington 
state. She possesses a B.A. in Business Administration 
from the University of Washington. Her first chapbook, 
Voyager, received great reviews. In her new chapbook, 
Love & death, she knits two topics together that are never 
far from one’s mind. Her third book, The fire behind 
my eyes, is available on amazon.com. She now resides 
in Sandpoint, Idaho with her cat, Casanova.
DAWNELLE HARRISON
The falling of a performance
    


The falling of a performance

Martonfi, Ilona

32 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
MARGO SWISS
Light Delivery
for Dr. Melanie Caetano 
(Obstetrics & Gynaecology)
Pregnant with worry these many months
I’ve grown gut-heavy with gloom
though friends have prayed
nay-sayed with conviction
all shall be well.
And to meet at last this brave slip of a girl
who, welcomes first, then hands me over
inside and out with her true-touch fingering! 
How cheerfully 
she probes away my morning dark, invites 
instead 
this tongue-tied heart to bear down and express
its full-term delivery of grief.
I marvel in the light
of her expert articulation of this quick benediction
summoning, with such ease, tears of simple joy
from these bone-dry eyes.
Outside after
high over everything I see
that rain has cleared
that sun, drawing back curtains of cloud,
has finally broken through
swabbing streets clean
awash in noonday light.
Margo Swiss has published poems in Quarry, Fiddlehead, 
Antigonish Review, and several Canadian anthologies. 
Her monograph, Crossword: A Woman’s Narrative, and 
anthology, Poetry as Liturgy: An Anthology of Canadian 
Poets, were published in the St. Thomas Poetry Series. 
She has a recent chapbook, Here Now (Arkwark Press), 
and her work will appear in a forthcoming anthology, The 
Poet’s Quest for God, published in England and edited by 
Todd Swift. She teaches English and Creative Writing at 
York University, and tutors in the Writing Department.
ILONA MARTONFI
The Woman by the River
Surrounded by fields
purple lilac, sycamore,
on the other side of the road
on orchard slopes down to the St. Lawrence.
The walled garden.
Red brick bungalow.
Moved to Anjou 1971 – 
with your three daughters.
Spade and bucket of cold water
burlap covering roots – 
Two five-year-old saplings
McIntosh apple trees
delivered by red pickup
Pépinière Jasmin.
For that moment,
you forgot you were a battered wife.
Ilona Martonfi is the author of two poetry books, Blue 
Poppy (2009), and Black Grass (2012). Ilona has 
published in Vallum, Accenti, The Fiddlhead, and 
Serai. She is the founder/producer of The Yellow Door 
and Visual Arts Centre Readings, and the co-founder of 
Lovers and Others. She is also the recipient of the qwf 
2010 Community Award.


The Woman by the River

Crewe, Carolina

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME184
region in Cuba would illuminate the 
patterns of migration even further. 
The tensions of racialization, 
ethnicity, socio-economic class, and 
region are taken up in Dubinsky’s 
next chapter on “the hybrid baby.” 
Here, Dubinsky examines discourses 
of anti-racist parenting, colour-blind 
liberalism, and colonialism in Ca-
nadian interracial adoption. The 
chapter compares Montreal’s Open 
Door Society, an organization of 
anti-racist white parents who adopted 
black children, to the removal of ab-
original children from their homes, 
and placement within white families. 
Dubinsky’s important contribution 
here is to point out that anti-racist 
parenting of black children was held 
up to demonstrate a progressive Ca-
nadian nation, while the adoption of 
aboriginal children by white families 
represents a national shame that has 
never been adequately addressed. 
Dubinsky could do more to draw out 
the nuances of adoption demography, 
which is buried in the final pages of 
the chapter, but it is a solid comple-
ment to a book that otherwise focuses 
on transnational adoption.
In her final chapter on “the missing 
baby,” Dubinsky once again returns 
to the movement of children across 
national borders. Dubinsky outlines 
what she calls a culture of child “miss-
ingness” as a legacy of civil war. Since 
children went missing through death, 
displacement, and disappearance, it 
is not surprising that Guatemalans 
are suspicious of transnational adop-
tion. Dubinsky closes the chapter by 
arguing that the traumas of war on 
family structure are not yet known 
in Guatemala. However, the Guate-
malan adoptee who sends remittances 
back to his/her/hir birth families and 
the proud Guatemalan birth mother 
who shows off photographs of her 
more-affluent child, complicate the 
kidnap/rescue binary as it seems 
neither wholly “good” nor wholly 
“bad,” but something a bit murkier. 
Dubinsky draws on an array of 
research materials including film, 
interviews, archives, adoption case 
files, and public monuments. Her 
book represents a fascinating look 
Dubinsky shows that these feelings 
are not incommensurate. Despite, or 
possibly due to, her personal invest-
ment in the topic, Dubinsky offers 
a well-crafted, thoughtfully argued 
and researched text on interracial and 
transnational adoption that moves 
beyond the kidnap/rescue binary 
to look at the symbolic nature of 
children.
Dubinsky’s objective is to make 
adoption more complex than kid-
nap or rescue discourses provide. 
Dubinsky says adoptive parents are 
neither imperial kidnappers who 
steal children from the Global South 
nor are they benevolent providers 
of a “better life” for children. These 
tropes do not reflect the reality of 
adoption, which involves personal 
agency, complicated relationships, 
community dynamics, militarist pol-
itics, shifts in immigration law, and 
nation-building strategies that allow 
for the circulation of children from a 
family of origin to an adopting family. 
Her unique contribution, then, is 
to draw out the nuances of gender, 
racialization, family, militarism, and 
nation in her look at adoption by Ca-
nadian and U.S. American parents.
To achieve this, Dubinsky uses 
three symbolic children as chapter 
tropes: the national baby, the hy-
brid baby, and the missing baby. In 
her chapter on “the national baby,” 
Dubinsky discusses the migration of 
Cuban children to the Global North 
in an effort to escape nationalist, 
pro-Castro brainwashing. Prospec-
tive U.S. American parents saw 
themselves as benevolent Christians 
and anti-communists by taking in 
Cuban children. Dubinsky hints to-
wards the interconnections between 
racialization, ethnicity, religion, and 
class in these discursive renderings of 
adoption, but this could be developed 
further. For instance, Dubinsky 
notes that anti-Castro, U.S. created 
propaganda worked primarily on 
middle-class Spanish-Cuban families 
who, in part, feared relocation of their 
children to the countryside populated 
by poor African-Cuban families. 
Therefore, a brief look at racism, 
religion, socio-economic class, and 
GIVING BREASTMILK: 
BODY ETHICS AND 
CONTEMPORARY 
BREASTFEEDING 
PRACTICE 
Rhonda Shaw and Alison Bartlett, 
Eds.
Toronto: Demeter Press, 2010
reviewed by 
carolina crewe
Shaw and Bartlett’s groundbreaking 
compilation adds significant depth to 
contemporary debates sur-rounding 
the characterization of breastfeeding 
and breastmilk as a gift. Shaw and 
Bartlett present breastfeeding as a 
at families and nationalism vis-à-vis 
pronatalism, racialization, milita-
rism, and colonialism. It would be 
a fantastic read in family studies, 
women’s studies, history, sociology, 
children’s studies, or cultural studies 
courses. Beyond wanting more detail 
about the intersections of racializa-
tion, ethnicity, class, and religion, 
part of Dubinsky’s own narrative is 
missing. Queer parents who adopt 
across racial and national lines are 
absent. I suspect this is partially 
due to the timeline of the book, 
but it would be interesting to hear 
more about the migration of queer 
parents to the Global South for the 
purposes of transnational adoption. 
This analysis would serve to enrich 
an already terrific text.
Jennifer Musial completed her Ph.D. 
in Women’s Studies at York University. 
She currently teaches gender studies 
courses at Trent University and Queen’s 
University. Jennifer is working on two 
projects: the first looks at the construc-
tion of fetal citizenship via the “Partial 
Birth” Abortion Ban Act and the 
Unborn Victims of Violence Act in 
the United States, and the second ex-
amines the backlash against Nadya 
Suleman, the “Octomon.”
VOLUME 29,  NUMBER 3 185
relationship of exchange—whether 
this is a typical mother-infant dyad or 
a donor-recipient relationship. This 
collection explores the multiple facets 
of systems and structures controlling 
breastfeeding and the use of breast-
milk as well as multiple perspectives 
on the value of breastmilk. This 
compilation includes 17 submissions 
organized into four sections: “Making 
Milk”; “Sharing Milk”; “Milk Poli-
tics”; and “Milk Theory.” 
This collection of historical, 
cross-cultural, and ethics pieces on 
breastfeeding, breastmilk sharing, 
banking, and cross-nursing illus-
trates the ways that breastmilk and 
breastfeeding mothers have been 
valued and/or characterized as “risky.” 
Shaw’s recommendation to policy 
makers and legislators in her article, 
entitled “Perspectives on Ethics and 
Human Milk Banking,” is to take 
into consideration a breadth of per-
spectives including “cultural, ethical, 
legal and spiritual” from “as many 
cultural groups as possible.” This is 
exactly what Shaw and Bartlett have 
done in choosing submissions for this 
collection. The perspectives range 
from women of the Berti culture in 
Sudan, mothers and nurses of pre-
mature infants in Ireland and New 
Zealand, mothers under scrutiny of 
the child welfare system in the US, 
breastfeeding advocates, and many 
more. 
Readers will appreciate this 
cross-section of current scholarly 
and policy debates on breastfeeding. 
It is widely accepted that breast-feed-
ing and breastmilk provide superior 
health benefits for infants (Mc-
Bride-Henry and Shaw, “Giving 
Breastmilk as Being With”). Yet, 
infant nutrition and the body politics 
of breastfeeding remain hot topic 
issues—particularly in the context 
of widespread marketing of infant 
formula under global capitalism 
as illustrated in Beasley’s chapter, 
entitled “‘Breast is Best’” and Other 
Messages of Breastfeeding Promo-
tion.” Also, high demand for donor 
milk in neonatal intensive care units 
as revealed in Bartle, “Going With 
the Flow” conflicts with fear and 
inadequate evidence related to the 
sharing and donation of breastmilk 
post-hiv/aids, as illustrated by Van 
Esterik, in her chapter “Breastfeeding 
and hiv/aids: Critical Gaps and 
Dangerous Intersections.” 
Cassidy and El-Toms’ chapter, 
“Comparing Sharing and Banking 
Milk,” succeeds in expanding schol-
arly knowledge on the ethics of com-
pensation for sharing breastmilk and 
shedding light on the concept of milk 
kinship. The rewards and sacrifices 
in milk kinship situations pose an 
interesting philosophical query. The 
authors reveal that milk kinship is like 
“old age insurance” but also prevents 
the families’ children from marrying 
among each other as they become 
like siblings. The family in effect 
gains another child—someone who 
will look out for them in their elder 
years. Donors in milk bank contexts, 
on the other hand, are rewarded with 
stories of the thriving infants they are 
helping in nicu units.
Gribble’s chapter delivers yet 
another perspective on compensa-
tion for breastfeeding by sharing 
the gratified and happy words of 
breastfed children. The ethical theme 
put forth in these chapters illustrates 
that financial compensation seems 
an inappropriate reward in this 
context. Yet, the feminist question 
remains of women’s characterization 
as duty-bound to contribute to the 
survival of infants by donating milk 
as an extension of the feminine role. 
Shaw’s chapter explores feminist 
concerns related to essentialism, duty, 
gift, sacrifice, commodity/product, 
and choice in consideration of breast-
milk banking. This discussion reveals 
the reverberating consequences of the 
subtleties of language in the construc-
tion of breastmilk donation as a “gift,” 
and in later chapters the language 
around “nursing” (Epstein-Gilboa, 
“Breastfeeding Envy”) and “time” 
(Bartlett, “Breastfeeding and Time”). 
Shaw’s theorization of this process 
allows scholars to recognize the 
complexities of this characterization 
across cultures and social groups, 
where a social hierarchy determines 
whose body is capable of achieving 
the giving of breastmilk without 
sacrifice and whose is not. Bartlett’s 
chapter brings this compilation full 
circle—drawing connections to 
Stearns’ first chapter, entitled “The 
Breast Pump.” Pumping breastmilk is 
the physical embodiment of Bartlett’s 
discussion of time wherein the med-
icalization and commodification of 
women’s bodily processes is sustained 
through scientific measurement and 
male dominated conceptualizations 
of time well spent. 
This book is significant for current 
scholars in many health disciplines 
and health studies, health policy, 
medical sciences, philosophy, women 
and gender studies, anthropology, so-
ciology, psychology, and economics. 
Lastly, yet certainly not least of all, this 
book is of interest to breastfeeding 
mothers and donors who are often 
asked what they spent their time 
doing all day.
Carolina Crewe is a doctoral student 
in Gender and Women’s Studies at 
York University in Toronto, Canada. 
She has three children. Her current 
research examines breastfeeding support 
and policy related to breastfeeding in 
Canada.
In the aftermath of war and au-
thori-tarianism, states increasingly 
award reparations for individual and 
collective human rights violations. 
As with many transitional processes, 
THE GENDER OF 
REPARATIONS: 
UNSETTLING SExUAL 
HIERARCHIES WHILE 
REDRESSING HUMAN 
RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
 
Ruth Rubio-Marín, Ed.
Cambridge: International Centre for 
Transitional Justice and Cambridge 
University Press, 2009
reviewed by emily rosser


Giving Breastmilk: Body Ethics and Contemporary Breastfeeding Practice

Wilkinson, Shelagh

Dr. Shelagh Wilkinson, York University Convocation, October 18, 2009

48 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
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In a village by the River Maros,
Carpathian Mountains – 1890
György Kovacs, a landless farmer,
Married Victoria Varadi, aged seventeen.
The daughter of a peasant,
my great-grandmother.
The bride brought her dowry chest:
Cross-stich tablecloth and linens,
folk motifs of birds, hearts, and tulips.
Carrying the bride’s bed:
Goose feather duvet, pillows.
György’s wedding shirt Victoria sewed.
Blue-painted table and chairs, a bench.
Oak cupboard, a present to his wife.
He brought a wagon, horses, a flock of sheep.
All the farm work done by hand,
harvesting wheat, rye, potatoes, cabbage, 
beetroot –
Flax and hemp woven on looms of the weaver.
Spinning sheep’s wool into skeins for knitting.
Lime washed mud-brick cottage.
Victoria wearing a wedding párta headdress,
green-ivory ribbons and gold and silver glass 
beads.
Calla lily and white roses bridal bouquet.
Fiddle music, zither, and cimbalom.
Lime washed mud-brick cottage – 
Blue-painted table and chairs, a bench.
In the life of a peasant,
what tortured his heart,
hiding in reed marsh and field?
Eight years of marriage.
Three sons and one daughter.
György Kovacs deserting wife Victoria.
He went back to his first love –
Folk motifs of birds, hearts, and tulips.
Ilona Martonfi’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
ILONA MARTONFI
The Wedding (Esküvö)
JOANNA M. WESTON
Beach Fire
we burn huge logs
charm perils outward
keep dragons back
with hawthorn
and sweet grass
this hour’s dancers
tall grey-bending
around standing stones
cast shadows long on sand
let me gain traction
for courage to dart
out into night
with fire’s flare
Joanna M. Weston’s middle-reader, Those Blue 
Shoes, was published by Clarity House Press. Fronte-
nac House of Calgary published her poetry collection, 
A Summer Father. Her e-book, The Willow Tree, 
can be found at www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com.


The Wedding (Esküvö)

Brock, Adrick

Simone

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