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Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.

Parents in Burnaby protest anti-discrimination policy

The Burnaby school district is under fire from parents who are concerned about a new inclusive policy whose "objective is to ensure all school community members learn to work together in an atmosphere of respect and safety "free from homophobia, transphobia, antigay harassment and exclusion, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity."

It's hard for me to wrap my head around why parents would be protesting a policy that wants to make a school a safer place for children- especially since one of the parents who opposes the policy is aware of the awful fact that trans and queer children are 16 times more likely to commit suicide than their straight, cis-gendered peers. All the same, parents are arguing that teaching tolerance about sexual identities infringes on a parent's right to give moral guidance to their child and that the issues of sexual and gender minorities affect only "a few" students. This is a heartbreaking attitude when you consider that most queer students feel unsafe in schools, many are physically assaulted, and most are verbally assaulted.

Parents should support any initiative that seeks to make schools a safer, happier place for all students. The protest and fear of children being "sexualized" or led morally astray speaks volumes about the ignorance and bigoted attitudes of those parents. It isn't enough to say, as many of the parents do, that essentially while they don't "have a problem" with queer and transfolk, they don't want to hear about them in their children's schools. That is, in fact, having a problem with queer and transfolk; it's called homophobia, and their protests are a demonstration of the necessity of having these issues raised thoughtfully in schools. Clearly many children aren't being taught tolerance, respect and understanding at home.

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Michelle is a freelance writer and anthropologist with a Master of Public Health from UBC. Her passions are promoting health and building community. She's worked in grassroots community organizations in Vancouver, Victoria and Oceania.

This weekend, Vancouver puts on her finest leather miniskirt for the SlutWalk

On January 24th, 2011, a Toronto police officer enraged sexual rights advocates around the world when he told a group of middle school students that women should "avoid dressing like sluts" if they didn't want to be victimized. The response was a SlutWalk, where more than a thousand women and men marched through downtown Toronto in provocative outfits, holding signs that pointed out clothing does not equal consent. The phenomenon has taken off, with SlutWalks springing up all over North America. And on May 15th, we'll be celebrating our own SlutWalk here in Vancouver.

While many are praising SlutWalks for seizing on our zeitgeist of humour-as-political-weapon, I've read a lot of responses to the first SlutWalk that distressed me. Critics are have drawn comparisons that go a lot like, "I wouldn't leave my car unlocked with the windows rolled down in a bad neighbourhood if I didn't want it to get stolen, so don't wear a short skirt if you don't want a man to rape you." This is a bad analogy for a lot of reasons, the least of which is not that my body is not a car.

Vote for Sexual and Reproductive Health Today!

I'm young, female, Aboriginal, and pro-choice, and that's why I voted against Harper.

Today, May 2nd, is the general election in Canada. It's hard for me to focus on anything else because the last few weeks have been so inspiring: seeing so many people of all ages come together to challenge voter apathy with insight and innovation. I'm hopeful that today will be a landmark election in Canadian history, one that demonstrates we aren't apathetic about how our country is led. You might know that in the last election, two out of five eligible voters didn't vote; only one in five voted for the current Prime Minister. In comparison, this election saw the highest-ever numbers of advance voting.

Why am I talking about the election on That's So Sexy? Because the personal is political, and your sexual health (and choices, and freedom!) are political issues. Stephen Harper has done terrible things for reproductive and sexual health while in office, many that directly impact Canadian women everywhere.