Category: Community posts

New Law Reform Reports from West Coast LEAF

Community posts
By Laura Track
Legal Director, West Coast LEAF

 

West Coast LEAF has published two new law reform reports in the last couple of months, and we hope you’ll check them out!

CyberMisogynyIn June, we released #CyberMisogyny: Using and Strengthening Canadian Legal Responses to Gendered Hate and Harassment Online. Cyber misogyny is the term we use to describe sexualized bullying, harassment, and hate speech directed at women and girls online. While harassment and discrimination against women and girls are nothing new, the Internet has created new opportunities to perpetuate harassment and abuse widely and anonymously, and the law has been slow to respond.

We analyzed five common manifestations of cyber misogyny:

  • “revenge porn” (non-consensual sharing of intimate images, often by an ex-partner)
  • “sexting” among youth
  • child sexual exploitation
  • cyberstalking
  • gender-based hate speech online.

We provide an overview of the current legal responses available to victims of these forms of cyber misogyny under criminal, civil, and human rights law, and make 35 recommendations for how Canadian and BC law and policy could be strengthened to better protect the equality rights of women, girls, and other vulnerable communities online.

Able MothersThen in September, we released Able Mothers: The intersection of parenting, disability and the law. This report takes a critical look at the discriminatory misconceptions and stereotypes that can influence decisions affecting mothers with disabilities. It also makes recommendations for law and policy reforms to better protect the dignity, equality, and rights of disabled mothers and women seeking to become mothers.

Governments have a legal obligation to provide the supports necessary so that parents can provide a safe and nurturing environment for their children. However, our research shows that government is failing to meet this obligation, with devastating results for both children and their disabled mothers. Rather than removing children from their disabled parents and placing them in foster care, we believe that government should be providing the supports these parents need, in the best interests of their children.

BCCPD is now Disability Alliance BC

Community posts

DABC-logo

By Jane Dyson
Executive Director, Disability Alliance BC

Yes, BC Coalition of People with Disabilities’ name is now Disability Alliance BC. BCCPD members voted strongly in favour of the change at our Annual General Meeting (AGM) in June. Since then, we’ve been gradually transitioning over to using our new name.

Organizations change their name. In fact, we changed ours 24 years ago. In 1977, our founding name was British Columbia Coalition of the Disabled. In 1990, we changed it to BC Coalition of People with Disabilities. The change reflected the fact that people with disabilities are people who happen to have a disability, rather than being “the disabled.”

So why change our name? Two years ago, we decided it was time to update our logo. We connected with Spring Advertising who generously volunteered their time to help us develop one. They suggested we also look at our name. They asked us if it continued to reflect who we are and how we are changing, what we do and why we do it?

BC Coalition of People with Disabilities is a long name and, while it has served us well, Board and staff agreed it was time to update. A Board member suggested the word “Alliance”–we liked it because it expresses strength and community. As a provincial organization, we also wanted to keep “BC” in our name. We serve people with disabilities and, while the experience of disability is unique to each person, we have many things in common that affect us. “Disability”, of course, reflects this common ground.

So, Disability Alliance BC was born. We are very excited about this change and it is a landmark event for our organization. Spring also designed our new logo and tagline that speak to the importance of building strong connections both within and outside of the disability community.

We hope you like our new name and logo. Change can be challenging—and this is a big change—but it is just a name. Disability Alliance BC–or D-A-B-C for short–will be doing the same work for the disability community. That has not changed.

A note from Clicklaw Editors: You can find Disability Alliance BC’s resources and services through the Clicklaw website. Clicklaw also connects you to a range of common questions, resources, and HelpMap services about disabilities.