Students at the University of Western Ontario, angry and offended by their student newspaper’s “Spoof” Issue (please see previous rabble.ca article) have been mobilizing through letter writing campaigns to The Gazette Editor-in-Chief Ian Van Den Hurk, the university, and the media, and through a protest held on campus last Thursday.

Some students have also written to Police Chief Murray Faulkner who is explicitly named in the article, to ask him to make a public statement about his portrayal and his stance on violence against women. Faulkner couldn’t be reached for comment.

Most students believe “Jennifer Ostrich” to be a caricature of Jenna Owsianik, chair of the Western chapter of the feminist group The Miss G__ Project and an active member of the Women’s Issues Network (WIN). She has also been vocal about criticizing The Gazette, and in the October issue of the Grapevine (another campus publication at Western), Owsianik wrote about what she sees as The Gazette‘s tradition of “negative sexual stereotypes and sexist attitudes” — and catalogued the offenses.

In addition to being angry and upset, Owsianik is disappointed that this is the response to her criticisms and to the challenge she issued to The Gazette and all student journalists in the Grapevine article “to be more responsible.” Though she’s not terribly surprised — The Gazette has been brushing off her criticisms and making fun of her and other WIN members all year — the severity and violence of this article still shocked and terrified her.

“I feel like I was raped by that article,” Owsianik said candidly.

The article also satirizes “Katie Conservative,” a pretty clear allusion to WIN Internal Relations Manager and active UWO Conservative Association member Kathryn Mitrow, who says that she is “appalled and ashamed” by The Gazette‘s actions.

In a letter to the editor published in the April 5 edition of The Gazette, graduate student Corey Katz takes issue with the Spoof Issue’s jokes about rape, violence against women and homosexuality. “These jokes are used every day to justify violence against women and queer people. How many jokes like these has someone read, heard, laughed at or told before theyâe(TM)re able to overcome their conscience enough to rape or assault someone?”

Recent UWO alumna and Miss G__ Project Co-Coordinator Sheetal Rawal also thinks that the targeting of Owsianik in this article is a way to silence activism about women’s issues on Western’s campus.

“For The Gazette to level a threat of rape at a student activist on campus, one who has had the courage to speak out against the shocking misogyny, homophobia, racism in the paper, as away to “teach [her] a lesson,” is highly irresponsible of a campus newspaper and absolutely unacceptable,” Rawal said. “This is hate speech.”

Rawal also said that she is “embarrassed” that, between this and other events like the “Saugeen Stripper” issue last year, Western is coming to be known for its rape culture. “I refuse to allow for my degree to read Rapist University,” she said.

Not all students are upset about it though, and even some of those who are continue to defend The Gazette‘s right to publish articles like this under freedom of speech.

“Freedom of speech is a fundamental pillar of our society, even if we don’t like it,” Western student Noah Desjardins wrote on the discussion board of a Facebook group created around this issue. “Any restrcitions placed on it lead to a slippery slope of censorship.”

Western student Fiona Martin thinks that freedom of speech should have its limits though.

“The debate continues on whether jokes against feminism are funny. Some people think they are, some don’t. What is not funny is the verbal attack against specific people that The Gazette article made. That is hate speech,” she wrote on the discussion board.

So far, The Gazette‘s only official response to the backlash from the Spoof Issue has been “get over yourself.” In an April 4 editorial they defend the “satire” of the issue, writing that those offended should “know a joke when they see one.”

However, several students have been demanding more extreme action, including calling for Van Den Hurk’s resignation and the withdrawal of student funding (through the University Students’ Council) to The Gazette.

Student Kate Bartz suggests that The Gazette‘s funding be revoked for one year, to match the USC’s actions against the Society for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) when it was accused of hate speech last year.

Throughout all this, Owsianik has been told by several people to “take a joke.”

“That article was about me getting raped and liking it,” she said. “When you live your life in my body and experience the violence that my body has felt, then you can tell me if satirical intention merits a diffused reaction,” she said.

If you’d like more information about this topic, please contact Laurel Mitchell, Jenna Owsianik or Kathryn Mitrow. The Miss G__ Project is made up of concerned citizens working together to promote equity in education, to combat sexism and homophobia through education, and to encourage active citizenship.

A letter to the editor of The Gazette

We are appalled by the violent “spoof” of the Take Back the Night March, the Women’s Issues Network and specific feminist activists on campus that appeared in the March 30 issue of The Gazette, the official student newspaper of The University of Western Ontario.

Yes, we understand the concept of a Spoof Issue. Yes, we realize (and value) the importance of critical and satirical writing on sensitive so-called “PC” issues, particularly within the intellectual environment (or, what’s supposed to be …) of this university community. Yes, contrary to popular belief, some of us feminists can even take a joke — some of us are downright funny. No, seriously. Stop laughing. (See?)

But we stop laughing, abruptly, when we read explicit threats of rape to individual women, all-too-thinly veiled under a pseudonym (much more thinly veiled, we’d add, than the still anonymous writer of the article) printed boldly in the pages of a widely circulated, student-funded publication — spoof issue or not:

“London Police Chief Murray Faulkner stopped greasing his nightstick and intervened. He grabbed the loudspeaker from Ostrich’s wild vagina and took it into a dark alley to teach it a lesson. To Ostrich’s dismay, the vagina followed, giggling as it said, ‘we love it when a man in uniform takes control.’”

“Took it into a dark alley to teach it a lesson” — is this really how our campus paper views rape, as teaching women a lesson? Was this the “social commentaries or criticisms,” as you put it in your editorial on April 4, that lies beneath the barbs of this article? The anonymous author goes on to suggest that the woman actually wanted to be raped, and would enjoy it.

We would be appalled to read this kind of thing anywhere, but it is especially disturbing given that “Jennifer Ostrich” is a very thin pseudonym for a student who has been active in the Women’s Issues Network [UWO’s campus women’s group] and feminist activism on campus — one who has had the courage to speak out against the shocking misogyny, homophobia and racism in the paper. To us, this article reads as an explicit threat of rape to that student, perhaps as a way to “teach her a lesson.”

Not only does this put that student’s safety at risk, but we think that, intentionally or not, it sends a pretty strong (and terrifying) message to all female students on campus, particularly those of us involved with WIN and other forms of feminist activism. For The Gazette to level a threat of rape at a student activist on campus as a way to “teach it a lesson” (note how she is reduced to a part of her anatomy, made an object, an “it”) is highly irresponsible of a campus newspaper and absolutely unacceptable.

In most things, there is some humour to be found. Under an expert hand, humour can even act as social commentary — sadly, this article is evidence of neither. What it is evidence of is the rape culture that truly does exist on this campus. No matter how many times you try to convince us “it was just a joke!”, The Gazette continues to adopt attitudes and practices in its pages that condone, normalize, encourage and excuse sexualized violence against women — and this latest example is truly the most explicit and the most chilling.

We are appalled that this article made it to press, that no one on The Gazette staff read it and thought that perhaps the extreme violence (not to mention personal attacks) of this article might have been perhaps going too far — yes, even for the Spoof Issue. And we are even more appalled to have to say that we go to a school where the official student newspaper adopts such practices.

We know that The Gazette operates independently from the university, but it really isn’t doing UWO — and that includes its community of alumni and friends — any favours by generating a negative international reputation for the school as one that not only makes light of rape, but encourages it as a method of silencing women’s voices on campus. We find the thought embarrassing and shameful, and we are speaking out because we refuse to allow for our degrees to read “Rapist University.”

In an April 4 editorial addressing the issue, the editors’ advice to those who were offended or who felt attacked by the Spoof Issue was: “get over yourself.” Now, that’s funny, because the impression we get from the members of the student body we’ve spoken to throughout this year is that students, exhausted as we are with blow after pseudo-journalistic blow, are just about ready for The Gazette to get over itself.

This is hate speech and for the writer of this article to hide behind a pseudonym, and for the editorial staff to hide behind the anti-intellectual “it’s just a joke” defense suggests a serious lack of accountability, integrity, and general humanity on the part of everyone who allowed this to happen.

So here’s an idea: on the day that you feel that your body is breakable and takeable, and you walk home at night in constant fear that someone — anyone — might take you into an alley and rape you, give us a call. Then we’ll talk.