Sudbury Women's Action Group v2.0

When I was a teenager in the 1970's, my mom was a founding member of something called the Sudbury Women's Action Group or S.W.A.G. - a group dedicated to discussing and advocating for women's equality. The old women's lib movement. I made fun of her at the time believing, in the naiveté of youth, that women were already equal. I called it her SWAT team and giggled about her and her friends being man-haters. She ignored me and my idiocy and carried on doing her bit to move the status of women forward. Who knew that 40 years later I'd feel the need to create my own women's lib group with fear that our daughters may have to do the same in 40 years.

RAGE

Rage is, frankly, cathartic. There is most certainly a need for women to have a safe place in their lives where they can speak freely about their feelings regarding sexism without fear of offending anyone and hash out strategies to change things. I guess that's step one of the 'consciousness raising' part of the women's lib movement of the 60's. Time to bring it back.

REASON

We need to better understand why sexism and racism are still happening in our country so we can address it in a reasoned manner. Our challenge is going to be having those conversations without blowing our minds. Why does Kellie Leitch think that Donald Trump's brand of politics is good for Canada, for example? It will be hard for me to have calm conversation about that but I know that anger is not my most productive response. Bill Clinton had a great quote: "America has come so far. We’re less racist, sexist, homophobic and anti specific religions than we used to be. We have one remaining bigotry: We don’t want to be around anyone who disagrees with us." I'm guilty of that, too. Time for me to take a dose of my own medicine and make a concerted effort to better understand what's underlying people's biases.

RESOLVE

I need to take action in my own life and encourage others to take action in theirs to combat sexism whether it's overt or implicit.

So, we've decided that we're going to re-start the Women's Lib movement here in Sudbury. We'll have consciousness raising sessions where we can rage about things, private or public reasoned conversations with people to better understand the state of affairs and resolve to encourage change wherever we can.

Rage. Reason. Resolve.