Week 4: On Equality

So for those of you outside of Ontario, Canada, a quick update: 
Last night, the Ontario Liberal Party, which is currently in power in the Provincial Legislature, elected a new leader, who by default will become the premier (basically like a governor) of Ontario.
The candidate they elected will not only be the first female premier of Ontario, but the first openly gay premier in Canada. Five other provinces also have female premiers, and women now govern, at the provincial level, 80% of the population of the country.

Politics and policy aside, I wanted to take a minute and talk about how freaking awesome this is. While following the election last night on Twitter, I heard a lot of opinions on this. One frequent argument I heard was that we should not even be noticing, or discussing, the gender or sexual orientation of a politician. While most of these arguments stem from good intentions - that a person's gender or sexual orientation have no bearing on how well they will do their job - I feel the need to disagree with them.

Of course gender and sexuality have nothing to do with how well a leader will govern, or how qualified they are for the position. And although this may seem obvious today, we cannot take this belief for granted, because it was not too long ago that a woman would never have been elected premier, let alone an openly LGBTQ person. That most of Ontario has realized this by now is something we should be extremely proud of.

BUT, this does not mean that we should not notice or mention the fact that our premier is a woman and is gay. In an ideal world, maybe we wouldn't need to - but our world is far from ideal. The fact is, women and LGBTQ people the world over receive far, far less representation in government than they should have. Shouldn't the tiny group of people leading a nation represent an accurate cross-section of the large group of people they are leading? Shouldn't children, of all genders and sexual orientations, be able to look at the people in charge of their province, their country and see themselves - and know they can do absolutely anything they set their minds to? Shouldn't women and LGBTQ people feel that they have a voice, that their leaders share their unique experience, just as they share the experience of being Ontarian, or Canadian?

So no, I don't think the gender or sexual orientation of our new premier has any bearing on her qualifications or how well she will lead our province.

But yes, I do think we need to notice it. We need to talk about it, we need to discuss it with our children, we need to be proud of our province for electing such a person.

And we need to celebrate it, because this is an amazing step in the right direction, the direction of equality.

Before you go, allow me to point you in one more direction - towards a new online magazine I will be writing for. Let's Talk Nerd Culture is created by young nerdfighters, and will cover a wide variety of topics - I will be writing about your favourite TV shows and their fandoms. Our first issue comes out February 1st, and if you don't want to miss it, please follow us on tumblr at http://letstalknerdculture.tumblr.com
We are all very proud of this, and excited to share it with the internets.

Thanks, and have a great day, bloglings