From April 15 to 21, Prevention of Violence Against Women Week, guest blogger Joanna Chiu and guest videographer Camila Galdino, produce a series on resisting media representations as a way to prevent violence against girls and women.

Today, as I was walking down the street to write at my favorite coffee shop, I received the usual afternoon greetings from my neighbours: "Hey baby!" "Konichiwa!" "Ni hao! "Look at that ass!!"

As all Indigenous women and women of colour know, if sexism wasn't bad enough, we encounter racism on a daily basis as well-on the street, in the classroom, in the workplace, and in the media. (See the theory of intersectionality on how oppressions like racism, ageism and classism intersect.)

From April 15 to 21, Prevention of Violence Against Women Week, guest blogger Joanna Chiu and guest videographer Camila Galdino, produce a series on resisting media representations as a way to prevent violence against girls and women.

Like many students who were sexually assaulted in college, I didn't identify what had happened to me as sexual assault until after I graduated. That moment of realization happened when I was sitting at a lecture hall back at my alma mater, the University of British Columbia. I had just returned to Vancouver from New York City, where I had completed a magazine internship and observed the curiosities and arrogance in the world's media capital firsthand.