But it isn’t.

Oh how I wish I was lounging in my white Donna Karan sweater and La Perla pyjama pants, drinking red wine out of my 32oz glass and eating popcorn. After all, that is what Olivia Pope would do after a difficult day of ‘handling’ multiple complex issues. However, that fantasy ends at Shondaland. Lately, it feels like it has been a never-ending difficult day in this country. Headline after headline has been a disappointing regression in humanity. As a woman, it feels like I have continually had the wind knocked out of me.

I have read, and listened and watched and read and listened some more and I am still left with the same question; how? How are we STILL in this place. In her book Bad Feminist, Roxanne Gray writes “ Righteousness gets in the way of what is right”. Truth. My mind immediately wonders to what has happened (and is happening) to those women at Dalhousie University and the shameful ways in which Richard Florizone has ‘handled’ the misogynistic and violent attacks against women. NOT a scandal, not a University issue, an attack. It is criminal. Restorative Justice? Really? Appalling.

I could go on at length about my complete disgust in the deeply flawed and still UNNAMED men that were a part of the Facebook group at Dalhousie University or the way my stomach turns when I think about how often I tuned into Q and listened to Jian Ghomeshi. But for me, that is easy. It is very easy for me to go on a rant about those individuals. It is assumed, it is warranted. However, it is not bringing about any change. And meanwhile; blame, shame and humiliation are all comfortably resting in the culture of silence that exists in our educational institutions and work places. It is never okay to turn your head the other way, it is never okay to laugh ‘just because everyone else did’, it is never okay. However, silence is exactly what we do to get by. We need to make a change.

I am writing this to encourage and challenge each of you to take a stance and to make a change; not just for women, but for humanity. Somewhere, somehow, someone told us it was acceptable to behave this way. We thrive on comparing and contrasting ourselves with others; working tirelessly to ensure we are better than at least one other person. In turn, we have created a climate to ‘other’ people, to take their issues and make them different than us so we are better than. In many cases, these differences have been the colour of someone’s skin or their anatomical make up. Do you see how ass backwards that is? Seriously. It is destroying our world. People are KILLING themselves. Humanity has never been more obese and more addicted to drugs (licit or illicit). Is that not evidence enough? We have silenced the individual voice and in turn, have created isolation in a world that has never been more connected and more dialled in. Humanity is self destructing and we are all watching, in silence.

To make a change you do not have to been an activist, but you do need to be an advocate. An advocate for yourself and an advocate for those who may have a quieter voice than you. I am asking you to not turn your head the other way, to not simply delete the inappropriate email and pretend it was never sent and to not laugh at the one person who is not there to defend themselves. It always starts with one. This time, be first.

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”
— Haile Selassie

Lise