A powerful display of pink body bags is being used in a Toronto campaign to shed light on the growing issue of femicide across the country.
On Friday, one day ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Aura Freedom unveiled a pop-up activation in downtown Toronto as part of their For Her campaign that calls on the federal government to declare femicide a national emergency.
The activation features life-sized pink body bags which represent traditional advertising tropes of gendered products for women while also demonstrating the stark reality of women killed by male violence.
In a video about the campaign, it shows a seamstress detailing and designing a bag for women. She narrates the video as if she is creating the latest luxury bag on the market, however at the end of the video, viewers see that it is actually a body bag.
The video cleverly describes it as “the bag women in Canada are dying for,” followed by statistics about femicide.
Aura Freedom Founder and Executive Director Marissa Kokkoros shares why they decided to create such a strong and compelling campaign.
“It’s intentionally hard hitting because femicide is hard hitting, intentionally staggering because femicide is staggering. So, we wanted it to be bold. We’re tired of our world ignoring femicide. We’re tired of people making excuses for male violence against women, sanitizing it, you know, explaining it away,” she said in an interview with Now Toronto on Friday.
According to the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, every two days in Canada a woman or girl is killed violently, most often by a man, solely because she is a woman.
“Femicide is the most violent manifestation of misogyny against women and girls – it is the ultimate control of women and girls to dictate their fate and, ultimately, their death,” the organization said.
Kokkoros said change starts with simply recognizing the term femicide in Canada because it differs greatly from homicide.
“We don’t have femicide recognized in Canadian legislation. So, in the Criminal Code, it’s not recognized or recognized in any other legislation and so we do hope that, if we declare an urgent crisis and issue an emergency that the government will begin to treat it as such. We can formally recognize it as a distinct form of violence and then work to prevent it. Femicide is preventable. I would love for people to know that almost more than anything else, that it doesn’t have to be this way,” she said.
Kokkoros also outlined some key facts about femicide which some people might not be aware of and is important to know.
“So, most women are killed by men they know and most women are killed by men who they should have been able to trust. So, about 80 per cent of femicides are perpetrated by men that the woman or girl knew in an intimate or familial way, so that’s the biggest one,” she explained.
She notes that Indigenous women, in particular, are disproportionately affected by femicide which is why the women’s organization has also partnered with the Native Women’s Resource Centre of Toronto to bring awareness to MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls).
Aura Freedom’s activation is in support of the annual international campaign 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence, which begins on Saturday.
“The campaign was started by activists at the inauguration of the Women’s Global Leadership Institute in 1991. It is used as an organizing strategy by individuals and organizations around the world to call for the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls,” described by UN Women.
Members of the public can visit the pop-up activation until 7 p.m. today at It’s Ok* Studios, located at 486 Queen Street West.
For those unable to stop by, Kokkoros says people can always support their campaign online on their website and through social media, as well as sign their petition to the federal government.
