“The truth is, if I actually spent my days actively paying attention to every example of misogyny around me, I would be a profoundly unhappy woman. Not bitchy or grumpy or short-tempered, but paralyzingly depressed. Women have to train themselves to avoid consciously reacting to every bit of misogynistic detritus permeating the culture through which we all move, lest they go quite insane. I write about the things I can’t not write about. If I wrote about all the examples of sexism I see every day, I’d never sleep.”
This quote sums up some pretty sad stuff about the world in which we live. Replace misogyny with racism, classism or ablism – especially ablism, the most vastly ignored of all the “ism”s – and it still stands true. It’s sad, sure, but to look at it a little more optimistically, it’s also a challenge. Beause we actually are able to move forward on these things (remember when I wasn’t allowed to vote, and Rhett & Griff & Jeff were all confined to institutions?), even when there’s still so much that needs fixing (like how I can’t parachute on Sundays in Florida or Jeff can’t legally go into certain washrooms without being pointed at at length first). So never be bored, because if this, this, this, this and this are any indication, we’ve all got a bunch of world-changing to do.