Toronto Oasis will run a third online meeting this upcoming Sunday April 5th. Please review our online meeting instructions at:
https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions
Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm but you can join in to the meeting starting at 10:45 am. Volunteers please join by 10:30am.
Our featured speaker will be Helen Jefferson Lenskyj. Helen will give a talk about her recently released book The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach, with the following blurb on its cover:
Do the Olympic games really live up to their glowing reputation? As the biggest global sport mega-event, The Olympic Games command public and media attention, while Olympic mythology and ritual obscure their underlying function as a profit-making business enterprise. In contrast to terms such as ‘Olympic movement’, and ‘Olympic Family’, the concept ‘Olympic Industry’ focuses on sport as an economic and political enterprise, its beneficiaries including sponsors, media and politicians. Negative impacts on host cities and countries disproportionately threaten the lives and welfare of disadvantaged populations.
Citizens’ resistance campaigns have been addressing these issues for decades, with some success. Recent activism focuses on anti-doping initiatives and sexual abuse of young women. Female athletes with ‘differences of sexual development’ are targets of the discriminatory gender policies of the International Association of Athletics Federation that disqualify them from women’s events.
Helen Jefferson Lenskyj is Professor Emerita, University of Toronto, where she taught sociology. Her work as a researcher and activist on gender and sport issues began in the 1980s, and her critique of the Olympic industry include: Inside the Olympic Industry; Olympic Industry Resistance; and Gender, Athletes Rights, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Helen grew up in Australia and has lived in Toronto since 1966. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 1983, and was a professor from 1986 until retiring in 2007. As well as writing books, she enjoys swimming and kayaking. Her website is: www.helenlenskyj.ca
You can RSVP for this on our Meetup page at:
https://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Oasis/events/khgwkrybcgbhb/
Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!