Need More Data

[theiform]

I think the internet has taught me more about social justice than any school, teacher, presentation or authority ever has, and more than anything else I think that's kind of pathetic.

And then I think, if they're in a position of authority, they probably didn't get there because they were so outside of the status quo.
Also kind of sad. Maybe. I dunno, like, since they are the status quo then aren't by definition...something something. I'm hurting my brain.

But like the people who have the most power have no reason to want change. Obvious statement is obvious, but it's like, I never would have thought about it before. That's why movements don't get as far as we think they should or could. Because the people with the power aren't doing any of the pushing.

• Guys get paternity leave now but nobody asks them, before they get hired, if they're thinking of starting a family down the road. And then refuses to hire them, or pays them less. Which is the whole 'justification' for the glass ceiling, that women will 'take more time off to raise their families'.

And it's like, shit, everything's so complicated and has so many implied layers, even going down to who wrote it and when and how empowered they were at the time. I'm a middle class white girl in a first world country, if I didn't BOTHER to know about things like mental illness and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and poverty and whatever else--and I know only the BAREST tip of the iceberg, I'm under NO delusions--then I just wouldn't. Period. I could, and many people do, lead my life oblivious to these issues. And I'm not going to lie, I see the appeal. It's HARD, knowing that out there people are HURTING in ways you can't even imagine, in ways that you are morally opposed to. Society will put a band-aid over it all and let you walk on by, and the lie of 'I'm one person, what can I do' is tantalizing. 'My hands are tied' even moreso.

I need to learn more. And then I need to DO something.
I don't know what yet, but I think that's what the learning's for.