the daily snivel
Rob vs. The Big Freak Out
So I've started to pack.
I've been quietly freaking out of late about the fact that I'm supposed to move in a month and a half, have not yet gone to look for a new apartment, have not yet booked a truck, and do not have the required driver's licence to DRIVE a truck yet, for that matter. I mean, I did actually look at the U-Haul website so that I could reserve a truck, and when I realized it would cost me $600 just to rent a truck to move to Toronto all on my own, I started panicking and required several minutes to compose myself. I closed the site down without making the reservation, wembling as I was over things like "am I really moving on the 31st? What happens if the apartament I eventually get isn't available until the next day? Or is available sooner? I've never driven to Toronto -- I've never driven anywhere. Maybe it would make more sense to hire movers after all?" I also don't have any money, rendering all of these things moot in a way, and causing super duper extreme freak outs on my part. I have to borrow some not insignificant sum from relatives if I'm ever going to make a deposit on an apartment and afford a move, making the process even more daunting and terrifying.
Nor had I started to pack, and as I surveyed the humbling collection of books and knickknacks all around me yesterday, I realized that the only way to escape this feeling of helplessness and panic was to start packing it up. I started with the books in my room. This was something of a challenge, since I have been forcing myself to suppress my packrat tendencies in recent years, but nevertheless have been living here for six years and things do have a way of accumulating. Oh, mercy yes. I had to force myself to look at each and every book carefully to make sure I truly wanted to bring it with me, and would truly have a use for it besides.
It was easiest to cull the herd of textbooks from my undergraduate degree -- in the end I only took two -- and the rest are going to be given away. It's a sad end to what probably adds up to at least $2000 of books over the years, but when you look at those outdated old psychology and sociology texts -- not to mention the dusty (literally) and forgotten linguistics and philosophy texts from those crazy electives, and the computer science books from the abortive cognitive science degree I thought I wanted until third year -- you just realize that they contain naught but apocrypha and clip art. I also found some antiquities nestled snugly in my bookcases, like copies of Windows 3.1 and DOS 5.0 from my very first computer (a 386 that I only finally got around to freecycling last year, thanks to some serious purging with my helpful friend Celeste). I bet if I were ambitious I could unload those on eBay for an entire buck. Sadly, it's off to a box on the curb for you as well, my pretties. Free to a good (or bad) home.
I even found some artifacts from high school. It's been eleven years and I still have my high school binders. Time to throw those away -- though I couldn't bring myself to part with some old stories and things I wrote in OAC (grade 13 to you non-Ontarians).
Hardest of all are the personal books and "this might come in handy someday" materials from law school like cases and coursepacks. I tried to be as picky as possible, getting rid of anything I can find again if I need it, and keeping what I found useful or would enjoy reading again. Most of the personal books came with me, of course, but I recycled the old Adbusters magazines and got rid of a copy of the Book of Mormon given to me by one of their earnest young missionaries several years ago. Anyway, in the end I packed up seven boxes, and my room looks as full as ever, but I feel more accomplished. One of my roommates just moved out (the good one, unfortunately), so his room is serving nicely as a storage/staging area. Had I gotten a job in Ottawa, I had this dream of taking over my 3-bedroom apartment and turning that room into an office. Such a shame that all I can do is move boxes around in it like a big game of Tetris.
I suggested to a friend, of course, that maybe while I have that room I should do something like roll around naked in it and really make it mine. You know, one does what one can. And whatever I do will be nothing compared to the profane rituals I perform once the bad roommates move out.
It's still nice to be feeling like I'm making some progress. I haven't moved in so long that it seems quite daunting, and so the sooner I pack and the less stuff I bring, the better off I'll be.
So -- do any sweet, helpful people out there want to help me purge the accumulated clutter of the past 10 years?
Comments:I've been quietly freaking out of late about the fact that I'm supposed to move in a month and a half, have not yet gone to look for a new apartment, have not yet booked a truck, and do not have the required driver's licence to DRIVE a truck yet, for that matter. I mean, I did actually look at the U-Haul website so that I could reserve a truck, and when I realized it would cost me $600 just to rent a truck to move to Toronto all on my own, I started panicking and required several minutes to compose myself. I closed the site down without making the reservation, wembling as I was over things like "am I really moving on the 31st? What happens if the apartament I eventually get isn't available until the next day? Or is available sooner? I've never driven to Toronto -- I've never driven anywhere. Maybe it would make more sense to hire movers after all?" I also don't have any money, rendering all of these things moot in a way, and causing super duper extreme freak outs on my part. I have to borrow some not insignificant sum from relatives if I'm ever going to make a deposit on an apartment and afford a move, making the process even more daunting and terrifying.
Nor had I started to pack, and as I surveyed the humbling collection of books and knickknacks all around me yesterday, I realized that the only way to escape this feeling of helplessness and panic was to start packing it up. I started with the books in my room. This was something of a challenge, since I have been forcing myself to suppress my packrat tendencies in recent years, but nevertheless have been living here for six years and things do have a way of accumulating. Oh, mercy yes. I had to force myself to look at each and every book carefully to make sure I truly wanted to bring it with me, and would truly have a use for it besides.
It was easiest to cull the herd of textbooks from my undergraduate degree -- in the end I only took two -- and the rest are going to be given away. It's a sad end to what probably adds up to at least $2000 of books over the years, but when you look at those outdated old psychology and sociology texts -- not to mention the dusty (literally) and forgotten linguistics and philosophy texts from those crazy electives, and the computer science books from the abortive cognitive science degree I thought I wanted until third year -- you just realize that they contain naught but apocrypha and clip art. I also found some antiquities nestled snugly in my bookcases, like copies of Windows 3.1 and DOS 5.0 from my very first computer (a 386 that I only finally got around to freecycling last year, thanks to some serious purging with my helpful friend Celeste). I bet if I were ambitious I could unload those on eBay for an entire buck. Sadly, it's off to a box on the curb for you as well, my pretties. Free to a good (or bad) home.
I even found some artifacts from high school. It's been eleven years and I still have my high school binders. Time to throw those away -- though I couldn't bring myself to part with some old stories and things I wrote in OAC (grade 13 to you non-Ontarians).
Hardest of all are the personal books and "this might come in handy someday" materials from law school like cases and coursepacks. I tried to be as picky as possible, getting rid of anything I can find again if I need it, and keeping what I found useful or would enjoy reading again. Most of the personal books came with me, of course, but I recycled the old Adbusters magazines and got rid of a copy of the Book of Mormon given to me by one of their earnest young missionaries several years ago. Anyway, in the end I packed up seven boxes, and my room looks as full as ever, but I feel more accomplished. One of my roommates just moved out (the good one, unfortunately), so his room is serving nicely as a storage/staging area. Had I gotten a job in Ottawa, I had this dream of taking over my 3-bedroom apartment and turning that room into an office. Such a shame that all I can do is move boxes around in it like a big game of Tetris.
I suggested to a friend, of course, that maybe while I have that room I should do something like roll around naked in it and really make it mine. You know, one does what one can. And whatever I do will be nothing compared to the profane rituals I perform once the bad roommates move out.
It's still nice to be feeling like I'm making some progress. I haven't moved in so long that it seems quite daunting, and so the sooner I pack and the less stuff I bring, the better off I'll be.
So -- do any sweet, helpful people out there want to help me purge the accumulated clutter of the past 10 years?
Droolingly, yes! I shall help you purge! Anytime. Give me the gift certificate! I mean give me those books!
I move once a year on average - usually to a different country. I learned to travel light.
JUL 12, 2005
THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
PAGE: B1 / FRONT (CITY)
Legal pioneer 'wrote the book' on women, courts
U of O professor to be honoured for her influence on Canadian law
KEYWORDS: crime, rcmp, women [AND] violence, victim*, sex offender*, crim* [NEAR] federal government
Pauline Tam, The Ottawa Citizen
Elizabeth Sheehy is not a household name, yet her quiet influence on Canadian law is profound.
As a scholar specializing in women's legal rights, she has been responsible for key research behind the notorious sex assault case that resulted in "no means no" being a feminist rallying cry.
As a legal advocate, she pushed the federal government to review the cases of women who were convicted of killing abusive men in self defence.
When a Toronto woman was assaulted at knifepoint by a serial rapist who broke into her apartment, Ms. Sheehy was part of the legal team that forced the country's largest police force to admit its officers were negligent in the way they investigated sex crimes.
For her contributions to women's justice, the 48-year-old University of Ottawa law professor is being awarded an honorary degree from the Law Society of Upper Canada. Fittingly, the ceremony will take place tomorrow as more than 180 new Ottawa lawyers -- two-thirds of whom are women -- are called to the Ontario bar.
At a time when the number of women graduating from law school is rising steadily, Ms. Sheehy sees a new generation of feminist legal activists, some of whom are her former students.
"There are women entering the legal profession with a passion to ask the tough questions, and to examine the law from a different perspective," she says. "They are the legal dissenters of today and the legal pioneers of tomorrow."
As a student at Toronto's Osgoode Hall Law School in the early 1980s, when women made up only 20 per cent of the class, Ms. Sheehy was among the first to take courses about women and the law.
She went on not only to teach those courses, but to write the textbooks that form much of what students learn today about how the courts treat women, both as victims of crime and as offenders.
In 1999, Ms. Sheehy was named by Ottawa Life magazine as one of the city's most influential women. Four years later, she became the first U of O professor to hold an endowed position in women and the legal profession, funded by Ottawa lawyer and philanthropist Shirley Greenberg.
Since then, Ms. Sheehy has published a vast body of research on legal responses to violence against women. She has also continued to challenge the legal status quo, most recently in the case of a Vancouver woman named Bonnie Mooney, who warned police, to no avail, about her husband's violent outbursts. Ms. Mooney sued the RCMP for failing to protect her after her husband went on a rampage with a shotgun, resulting in his death and the death of Ms. Mooney's best friend.
The trial judge rejected Ms. Mooney's lawsuit, as did the B.C. appeal court, but not before Ms. Sheehy helped the support group, Vancouver Rape Relief, gain status as an intervener.
Even when Ms. Sheehy's research doesn't change the law in the short term, it often has a lasting impact. In 1991, the Supreme Court of Canada threw out the rape shield law that protects sexual assault victims from being cross-examined in court about their sexual history. As one of the advocates of the law, Ms. Sheehy prepared an analysis in support of it, and was pleasantly surprised when then-justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube wrote one of her most well-known and controversial dissents, based on her research.
A year later, Parliament passed a form of the rape shield law, designed to protect complainants from what are known as the "twin myths" of sexual assault: that unchaste women are more likely to consent to intercourse, and they make less credible witnesses in a court case.
Ms. Sheehy's lobbying efforts also prompted the federal government to review the cases of women who killed abusive men in self-defence, but were still convicted of murder or man-slaughter. In 1992, Ottawa Judge Lynn Ratushny was appointed to head the review, with Ms. Sheehy providing research and legal analysis for battered women who have killed violent mates. After the review, the federal government pardoned two women and erased the rest of the sentences of two others.
Ms. Sheehy also helped prepare the legal arguments for a 1999 Supreme Court case against Steve Ewanchuk, a serial sex offender whose court battle fuelled a national debate over sexual consent. The case prompted the Supreme Court to strengthen the country's "no means no" law.
Perhaps the most high-profile case Ms. Sheehy has been involved in is the lawsuit of a woman known simply as Jane Doe, who accused the Metro Toronto police of failing to warn women about a serial rapist on the loose.
As one of the experts on Jane Doe's legal team, Ms. Sheehy found not only negligence, but systemic sexism in the way the force investigated sexual assaults. The practices ranged from belittling comments to would-be victims, to an organized attempt to minimize or dismiss victim complaints.
"It was really disappointing to discover there was a sense of disbelief among police officers, who either didn't believe the victims' stories, or who thought of rape as a sexualized activity -- something men do for their sexual pleasure -- rather than something they do to completely humiliate and dominate women," recalls Ms. Sheehy.
"It just shows you how much of a liberal idealist I am. There were a lot of misconceptions in how the law regarded and understood rape as a crime."
After Jane Doe won her lawsuit in 1998, a city-ordered auditor's report recommended 57 changes in the way police work. They included adding date rape to the sexual assault unit's mandate, having the unit work at night and on weekends, when many sexual assaults occur, and working with paid experts from the women's community.
Ms. Sheehy likens the battle to the current public debate over the extent to which police practise racial profiling.
"In the same way that women's voices and experiences haven't been heard, racialized minorities are having a hard time getting their voices heard. But I'm confident that there is a new generation of legal professionals -- both men and women -- who are willing to fight those battles."
THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
PAGE: B1 / FRONT (CITY)
Legal pioneer 'wrote the book' on women, courts
U of O professor to be honoured for her influence on Canadian law
KEYWORDS: crime, rcmp, women [AND] violence, victim*, sex offender*, crim* [NEAR] federal government
Pauline Tam, The Ottawa Citizen
Elizabeth Sheehy is not a household name, yet her quiet influence on Canadian law is profound.
As a scholar specializing in women's legal rights, she has been responsible for key research behind the notorious sex assault case that resulted in "no means no" being a feminist rallying cry.
As a legal advocate, she pushed the federal government to review the cases of women who were convicted of killing abusive men in self defence.
When a Toronto woman was assaulted at knifepoint by a serial rapist who broke into her apartment, Ms. Sheehy was part of the legal team that forced the country's largest police force to admit its officers were negligent in the way they investigated sex crimes.
For her contributions to women's justice, the 48-year-old University of Ottawa law professor is being awarded an honorary degree from the Law Society of Upper Canada. Fittingly, the ceremony will take place tomorrow as more than 180 new Ottawa lawyers -- two-thirds of whom are women -- are called to the Ontario bar.
At a time when the number of women graduating from law school is rising steadily, Ms. Sheehy sees a new generation of feminist legal activists, some of whom are her former students.
"There are women entering the legal profession with a passion to ask the tough questions, and to examine the law from a different perspective," she says. "They are the legal dissenters of today and the legal pioneers of tomorrow."
As a student at Toronto's Osgoode Hall Law School in the early 1980s, when women made up only 20 per cent of the class, Ms. Sheehy was among the first to take courses about women and the law.
She went on not only to teach those courses, but to write the textbooks that form much of what students learn today about how the courts treat women, both as victims of crime and as offenders.
In 1999, Ms. Sheehy was named by Ottawa Life magazine as one of the city's most influential women. Four years later, she became the first U of O professor to hold an endowed position in women and the legal profession, funded by Ottawa lawyer and philanthropist Shirley Greenberg.
Since then, Ms. Sheehy has published a vast body of research on legal responses to violence against women. She has also continued to challenge the legal status quo, most recently in the case of a Vancouver woman named Bonnie Mooney, who warned police, to no avail, about her husband's violent outbursts. Ms. Mooney sued the RCMP for failing to protect her after her husband went on a rampage with a shotgun, resulting in his death and the death of Ms. Mooney's best friend.
The trial judge rejected Ms. Mooney's lawsuit, as did the B.C. appeal court, but not before Ms. Sheehy helped the support group, Vancouver Rape Relief, gain status as an intervener.
Even when Ms. Sheehy's research doesn't change the law in the short term, it often has a lasting impact. In 1991, the Supreme Court of Canada threw out the rape shield law that protects sexual assault victims from being cross-examined in court about their sexual history. As one of the advocates of the law, Ms. Sheehy prepared an analysis in support of it, and was pleasantly surprised when then-justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube wrote one of her most well-known and controversial dissents, based on her research.
A year later, Parliament passed a form of the rape shield law, designed to protect complainants from what are known as the "twin myths" of sexual assault: that unchaste women are more likely to consent to intercourse, and they make less credible witnesses in a court case.
Ms. Sheehy's lobbying efforts also prompted the federal government to review the cases of women who killed abusive men in self-defence, but were still convicted of murder or man-slaughter. In 1992, Ottawa Judge Lynn Ratushny was appointed to head the review, with Ms. Sheehy providing research and legal analysis for battered women who have killed violent mates. After the review, the federal government pardoned two women and erased the rest of the sentences of two others.
Ms. Sheehy also helped prepare the legal arguments for a 1999 Supreme Court case against Steve Ewanchuk, a serial sex offender whose court battle fuelled a national debate over sexual consent. The case prompted the Supreme Court to strengthen the country's "no means no" law.
Perhaps the most high-profile case Ms. Sheehy has been involved in is the lawsuit of a woman known simply as Jane Doe, who accused the Metro Toronto police of failing to warn women about a serial rapist on the loose.
As one of the experts on Jane Doe's legal team, Ms. Sheehy found not only negligence, but systemic sexism in the way the force investigated sexual assaults. The practices ranged from belittling comments to would-be victims, to an organized attempt to minimize or dismiss victim complaints.
"It was really disappointing to discover there was a sense of disbelief among police officers, who either didn't believe the victims' stories, or who thought of rape as a sexualized activity -- something men do for their sexual pleasure -- rather than something they do to completely humiliate and dominate women," recalls Ms. Sheehy.
"It just shows you how much of a liberal idealist I am. There were a lot of misconceptions in how the law regarded and understood rape as a crime."
After Jane Doe won her lawsuit in 1998, a city-ordered auditor's report recommended 57 changes in the way police work. They included adding date rape to the sexual assault unit's mandate, having the unit work at night and on weekends, when many sexual assaults occur, and working with paid experts from the women's community.
Ms. Sheehy likens the battle to the current public debate over the extent to which police practise racial profiling.
"In the same way that women's voices and experiences haven't been heard, racialized minorities are having a hard time getting their voices heard. But I'm confident that there is a new generation of legal professionals -- both men and women -- who are willing to fight those battles."
