PODCAST: Daisy Kler on the way racism and misogyny play out in Canada to doubly harm women

Take Back the Night/Friday, September 18, 2015.

 “Male violence against women is still considered a distraction [by the male left], rather than a fundamental oppression that the left has to deal with.” — Daisy Kler

We talk about intersectionality a lot these days, but what does it really mean to combine our analysis of race, class, and gender? While we know women from all walks of life suffer male violence, how are working class women and women of colour impacted particularly? How has the activism of Indigenous women and other feminist groups in Canada made a difference, in terms of understanding the reality of male violence? And moreover, why has the left failed to effectively analyze and challenge sex based oppression and male violence, despite its interest in ending systems of oppression and building an equitable, just society?

In this episode, I speak with Daisy Kler, a collective member at Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter and the founder of South Asian Women Against Male Violence. Vancouver Rape Relief is Canada’s first rape crisis line and runs a transition house for battered women and their children. Daisy has worked there for over 18 years. In those years she has played a role in training and maintaining volunteers and as a media spokesperson. She now assists in operating the rape crisis line and transition house. In recent years she was voted one of the 100 most influential Indo-Canadians in British Columbia. Daisy is a proud Punjabi whose paternal grandfather came to work here in 1905. She is rooted in the history of Vancouver’s South Asian immigrants and continues to fight for all women’s equality.