My coworker just sent this link to me. How incredibly appropriate it is when considering the themes of BtVS.
From
Barbara Ehrenreich's commencement speech at Barnard:
Gender equality cannot, all alone, bring about a just and peaceful world.
What I have finally come to understand, sadly and irreversibly, is that the kind of feminism based on an assumption of moral superiority on the part of women is a lazy and self-indulgent form of feminism.
Self-indulgent because it assumes that a victory for a woman - whether a diploma, a promotion, a right to serve alongside men in the military - is ipso facto - by its very nature -- a victory for humanity.
And lazy because it assumes that we have only one struggle - the struggle for gender equality - when in fact we have many more. The struggles for peace, for social justice and against imperialist and racist arrogance ... cannot, I am truly sorry to say, be folded into the struggle for gender equality.
Women do not change institutions simply just by assimilating into them.
Read the whole thing here.