I am an avid Twitter user and, I will admit, I love a good debate. If you are like me and you can’t get enough of politics in your regular day-to-day life, you probably spend the better part of your evening scrolling through the pages upon pages of #ableg and #cdnpoli twitter-feeds. Now, if you spend your nights watching the Big Bang Theory and putting your feet up, congratulations, you have achieved what I can only aspire to, relaxation. Anyone who is a frequenter of the #ableg twitter-feed can tell you that there is always something to chime-in on.

Yesterday I came across a tweet that reads:

Mr Kenney ~ we already invited the strong women; they prefer to be part of political parties that acknowledge and support them. #ableg #abndp @albertaNDP @SANDRAYYCNW pic.twitter.com/02ef87K3vY

— Shawna Gawreluck (@ShawnaGofABPoli) December 19, 2017

The above tweet is referencing Sandra Jansen’s departure from the PC Leadership Race earlier this year, after complaints of harassment from other leadership hopefuls. MLA Jansen stepped down from the PC Caucus soon thereafter and is currently sitting as the Minister of Infrastructure for the NDP government — like I said, #ableg is a bustling and exciting corner of the world and as much as I would love to go on a tangential rant discussing how I feel about that…I digress.

As someone who considers herself to be a strong, conservative, woman I felt that this kind of grandiose, and I would argue inaccurate, statement merited a response.

https://twitter.com/michaelaglasgo/status/943169774162403328

https://twitter.com/michaelaglasgo/status/943171345860272128

For starters, I would like to point out that strong women exist on all sides of the political spectrum. To me, strength is the ability to articulate your conviction and hold to it, no matter the circumstance. Although I may not agree with women from all sides, I can definitely appreciate their “strength” while disagreeing with them, entirely, in principle. It is for this reason that I argue that to explicitly state that “strong” women adopt one style of partisanship, New Democratic, is not only fallacious but problematic as it discounts the strides and accomplishments of women from various political backgrounds.

As far as strength among conservative women, I can think of many instances and people to follow if the original poster (OP) would like some examples. As far as Alberta MLA’s go, our United Conservative Party has excellent examples of strength and resilience in Leela Aheer and Angela Pitt, who have worked their tails off since being elected, to articulate conservative principles in the legislature, standing up for Albertan workers, rural communities and against government tax grabs like impending increase to the Carbon Tax in January of 2018. Apart from MLA’s I could write a novel about the strong women that I have met through the UCP who epitomize strength, some of whom have twitter, and joined this debate.

Further, in my observation of the current political climate, I have noticed that there is a tendency to equate women’s issues with a leftist agenda. There is this assumption that, because I am a woman, it is right for me to identify with a leftist narrative and thus, vote along those lines — if it isn’t already obvious, I reject that assumption outright.

Women are not some uniformly thinking, lock-in-step kind of identity category. I feel that I am always saying this, some way or another, in my blog posts but I feel that I must say it again:

When we assume that women cannot separate themselves from their moral convictions, gender identity, or what have you, we are actually regressing as a society. Wouldn’t it be more advantageous to acknowledge diversity of opinion, without the virtue signalling of right and wrong ways to politicize womanhood, and go from there?

One of the basic tenets of democracy is that we all have a right to elect our governments. To dismiss an entire group of women, because they do not think the same way that you do, is undemocratic and, quite frankly, just plain ignorant.

On the topic of quotas mentioned, let me brief:

If my belonging to a political party, or ability to be elected, is contingent on an arbitrary quota, instead of based on the merit of my actions and strength of my convictions, that is not a “win” for me or anyone else.

As a conservative, I believe in the freedom of individual members to elect women as capable candidates. Those women, much like the men who succeed, have knocked on thousands of doors, and bring forward innovative policy, and worked the hardest to earn their position. Since the UCP’s inception, Jason Kenney’s victory, and even dating back to my time as a Wildrose member, I have never felt anything less than supported or acknowledged as an equal by party members or MLAs. In fact, some of my greatest supports and encouragements, politically have come from men like Drew Barnes, a UCP MLA who people like @ShawnaG_NDP  have, inaccurately, regarded as viewing women as “less-than”.

More to this point, and in sum, earlier this year I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party (and newly elected MLA for Calgary-Lougheed by a 72% margin). He was explicit in his expression of support for women to seek nominations and become formidable forces in the UCP. To me, his outright rejection of quotas is a compliment as he sees us as able and ready, not dependent on a propping-up of sorts to achieve the same ends as a male opponent.

I am sick and tired of the fear-and-smear tactics used by leftist keyboard warriors to accuse members of the conservative movement as something that they are not. So, @ShawnaG_NDP, if you have made it to the end of this blog post, thank-you for reading. For everyone else, let’s continue to challenge the way that conservative women are portrayed — because we are so much more than that — after all, it’s why we started Story of a Tory in the first place.