As members of the University of British Columbia community, we express our solidarity with women and feminist faculty members, instructors, staff and graduate students at the University of Toronto. We condemn the recent threats of violence against women and feminist teachers and scholars. We understand these threats to be a symptom of a broader pattern of masculinism and misogyny in our society more broadly and in the spaces of the academy more specifically.
Many of us are scholars of gender, feminist and women’s studies from different academic units at the University of British Columbia in unceded Musqueam territory. Most of us are women and some of us are gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans* and queer. Some of us are indigenous people and people of colour. Many of us are community organizers and activists who are activity involved in mobilizing for social justice, especially for and with those marginalized along lines of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, dis/ability, religion and immigrant status.
We are committed to intersectional gender, racial and sexual justice both in our scholarly work and in our political commitments within and outside the university. We thus unequivocally support our colleagues at the University of Toronto, particularly those in the Women and Gender Studies Institute and the Department of Sociology who were singled out in the threats.
In solidarity,
Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
For more information on the incident, please see:
http://news.utoronto.ca/police-investigating-online-threats-targeting-women-feminists-u-t
