Page 4 March 4, 1987 Orther Press NOT TONIGHT, | HAVE A HANGNAIL. * Part time * Full time - Telemarketing - Perfect for students - Guaranteed hourly wage plus bonuses pougias €ellege Student Society elfare woe Canadian University Press VANCOUVER -- Four and a half years ago, Julie came to B.C. from Quebec, fresh out of high school, looking for a job. Instead, she received a welfare cheque and the general prejudice of a society that disdains welfare recipients. “When you are on welfare, peo- ple look down on you as if you were the plague,” Julie said. B.C. currently has more than 218,000 welfare recipients, com- pared to less than 100,000 before 1980. Julie, who did not wish to reveal her last name, is now a third-year arts student at the University of British Columbia. Her story was part of a recent “welfare week”, organized by the UBC New Demo- cratic club to make students more aware of the problems faced by people on welfare. Club president Freyja Berg- thorson said “it is easy to forget people are in a no hope situation.” Julie found people’s attitudes the hardest things to deal with while she collected welfare. She said people considered her a “princess on welfare”, and could Federal censorship policy “repression” Canadian University Press *& ATTENTION Effective immediately, there will be a 50¢ surcharge per visit for all Douglas College students using the Canada Games Pool and the Maple Ridge Leisure Center. We apologize for any inconvenience. BURNABY -- Toronto journalist Varda Burstyn says the federal government wants to eliminate sex, not sexism, with its obscenity legislation. Since December 1984, when the government responded to a Pent- house magazine pictorial of bound: and gagged Japanese women by giving Canada Customs a freer reign to restrict entry of obscene material, the flow of pornography has not slowed, Burstyn told a re- cent forum sponsored by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. Instead, there has been a “sys- tematic persecution of feminists, gays and lesbians,” said Burstyn, editor of the book Women Against Thank you DCSS not understand how healthy young people could need govern- ment assistance. Julie said people should be more caring and sympathetic toward the issue of income assistance, and that she was glad to be out of it. During the time Julie collected welfare she felt extremely insecure and “everything seemed to be on hold, at an age when people are supposed to be optimistic about life.” Julie said it is stressful trying to z make ends meet while on welfare, and the last week of the month is~ always the toughest. “Sometimes. you have _ three bucks left and it’s not because you throw your money around,” she said. Another problem for welfare recipients is that many of the jobs - available are pay poorly and lead nowhere, said Julie. “There is little reward in doing repetitious work 40 hours a week to make such a small amount of money,” she said. Julie said it is difficult for people to get out of the welfare trap, be- cause many cases are catch-22 situations. “Most welfare people don’t have the money to buy a suit, but with- out a suit it is hard to find a job,” she said. Censorship. Burstyn said men’s. magazines which objectify women, such as Penthouse or Hustler -- “that mi- sogynist piece of excrement” -- usually cross the border without problem, while anti-porn, erotica, and gay and lesbian literature is often stopped. “So what we see is women dis- played as sex objects, but we can’t see people making love,” she said. To Burstyn, the main reason why censorship shouldn’t be ap- plied to sexual material is that sex is subjective -- what some people see as obscene, others see as erotic. As an example of the subjectivity of censorship, Burstyn said a pas- sage describing consentual sado- masochism in The Joy of Sex is permitted entry into Canada, while a similar passage in The Joy of Gay Sex is banned. “It’s selective repression on the basis of what offends the people who are enforcing it,” she said. Burstyn said Bill 30, the obscen- ity legislation introduced last year by former Justice Minister John Crosbie, would not have worked because it outlaws the presenta- tion of natural sexual functions and practices. Although the legislation died on the order paper last fall when Par- liament prolonged an extra month, the Justice Department is expected to soon introduce similar legisla- tion. Burstyn said the government paid lip service to feminists by in- cluding a clause about violence against women, but added _politi- cians had a different agenda to strike sex, not sexism, out of the public realm. “(The legislation) makes the government look like it is respon- ding to legitimate concerns about the nature of women’s representa- tion, but it backs off on women’s concerns that would give women real power in society,” she said.