To be honest with you, a part of me is afraid of calling myself a feminist mostly because of how sketchy it may sound, but still I am.

You may imagine that my main inspiration for this statement is that 80% of the people in my family and some of my closest friends are hard working women (i.e. I’ve had great example through my life), but you may be mistaken. While as I love and admire the women in my life, the main reason why I consider myself a feminist is because I believe in equality.

With feminism we all win.

I don’t aim to discuss why feminism must exist. My point is that -all across the media- is relatively easy to find news of falsely called “feminists” groups aiming towards the destruction of men, portraying us as the evil ones just ‘because’, demanding oppression of men as the way to make things “even”: I think that those groups are getting the message wrong. Is naïve, indeed primitive, to think that you fight fire with fire.

What is the right way to be a feminist? If you ask me, since pure feminism is aiming towards equality, I think ‘equality’ is answer.

The purpose of this preface is that, in my opinion, Dr. Earley’s work is a remarkable example of a pure feminist work. It was never introduced as a “feminist” research: in fact, the term feminism was not even used during the presentation. Then, why would I state this?

I consider (and admire) her job because she joined other women and, together, they didn’t work under premises like “men are root of evil” or “women have been oppressed“; in contrast, they joined because a huge environmental problem demands attention. Besides, she built a partnership with the Sahtu people: she used the collectiveness for addressing a bigger, common problem.

The unattended degradation of the Canol pipeline remnants for almost 80 years is something worth paying attention: the toxic materials and the possible, and real, impact on wild and human life really must be addressed.

I want the foundation of my research (and professional development) to be the possibility of collectiveness: leaving all differences aside, working together to address common problems, regardless of the sex, gender, culture, ethnicity, or nationality; but as inhabitants of this planet. I was happy to discover this trait on Dr. Earley’s work.

She mentioned though that some of the locations are historical and might become points of interest for tourism. While I love this idea (I have “a thing” for historic sites) I could not help but wonder: If we grant public access to such historic sites, how can we ensure that the consumer’s safety is not going to be compromised in any way?

Thank you for reading.

Sergio