I've only been at UCLA a few days and I've already had an opportunity to attend a number of incredibly enriching and inspiring events. One of the best ones so far was a discussion hosted by Roxane Gay, the author of 'Bad Feminist'. This article on The Daily Bruin nicely encapsulates the key ideas that she raised, and guess what – yours truly was interviewed for the paper!
What's more important though is that there's a couple of things I learned during that short yet exciting talk that I would like to share with you all. I would often find myself trying to be an ally, but I guess Gay's position on this is much more reasonable: it's better to do away with the concept of allies altogether! Our society is laden with many long-standing problems, and it's incumbent upon all of us to deal with them and solve them. By calling ourselves allies we often distance ourselves from the shared responsibility as if we're somehow disconnected from the reality that people who are disenfranchised in one way or another live in. Another important point is that a lot of times, even within the feminist movement, those people who do not hold a position of privilege feel the necessity to somehow change and reinvent themselves to at least partly redeem the power that is rightfully theirs. And even if that change leads to what would be considered success, that too is unjust – the problem is not with the people on the receiving side of oppression, it's the ones who exercise their privilege and directly or indirectly support the oppressing side who really have to change.
