Since the 70’s, transition houses have provided women with immediate protection for themselves and their children. In 1981, after being open for 8 years, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter opened our own transition house. And since then, we’ve housed more than 6000 women and children escaping violence.
A safe place to go is the main reason women come to a transition house, but what they get is even more than that. Women in feminist transition houses get to become part of our community of women who fight back against the sexist violence they experienced. Transition houses were not a creation of the government, but an invention of the women’s movement. So how did it all start?
Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists tracks the history of Canada’s battered women’s shelters and tells the stories of bold women with ideas and how they organized themselves to turn those ideas into concrete options for women fleeing male violence.
I particularly loved reading the reflections of the women who contributed to the feminist movement. Quotes from women across the country are throughout the text and give you a glimpse into their courage and determination:
“It’s almost a requirement of transition house work that you are into civil disobedience. You … will be hiding prostituted women, illegal immigrants, mothers who are in contempt – and rightfully so – of the courts, because the children have been incested. We all do the same thing. We shut up. We take the women into the houses. We take up collections between ourselves as workers, and buy women airline tickets. We just forget women’s names, and use other names. We fail to report what the government would like us to report. To do anything less than that is to be less than a transition house. It’s a requirement of the job.” – Lee Lakeman
“We ran articles on lesbianism, women’s prisons, and our patriarchal churches, classrooms, and unions. I would get some complaints from the publisher and from the top brass on the ninth floor about turning this nice little women’s magazine into a feminist rag.” – Doris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Chatelaine (I didn’t realize it was so influential)
“We just made it all up. It wasn’t rocket science. It was very practical. It came out of simple women’s knowledge and experience about what home is like, what belonging is like, and about help and support: What needs to be done.” – Lynn Zimmer
We loved reading this book and recommend you check it out from your local library in Vancouver and beyond!
