‘Personal is Political’ — A Queer Perspective

• September 22, 2020
• Politics, Queer

Introduction

No one particularly knows where the feminist slogan “The Personal is Political” first came from (Napikoski, 2020). Irrespective of whether one attributes it to Carol Hanisch’s essay from her anthology “Notes From the Second Year: Women's Liberation” (Hanisch, 1970) or the older work “The Sociological Imagination” by C. Wright Mills (Mills, 1959) which discussed the intersectionality of public issues and personal experiences, if one considers politics to include the “systematic reflection of the mechanisms by which power is exercised by one group over another” (Bhargava, 2008), it follows a priori that we need to include personal issues in the matters of politics. 

“Why is this such a direct conclusion?”, one might ask. The answer to them is simple: Any person who belongs to one or an intersection of marginalised communities in the modern world—whether it be race, class, gender, sexuality or any other identity—is painfully aware that even the most personal issues in their life are subject to the power dynamic established by an unjust status quo. Smallest of their actions are put under the looking-glass and undergo intense scrutiny by systemic socio-political institutions that continuously threaten their identity. If that is the case, how is their personal, not political? Thus, if you have the luxury to be oblivious to the legitimacy of this statement, the crucial first step is to acknowledge your privilege.

In an essay titled “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of Sexual Politics” (Rubin, 1984), Gayle Rubin, a famous feminist and anthropologist, explored the “politics of sex” and proposed the theory of “Benign Variation” which described the process by which natural variation in design is assigned meaning by existing social institutions which are often plagued by biases, prejudices and stereotypes which transform benign differences into inequalities. As Rubin writes,

“Variation is a fundamental property of all life, from the simplest biological organisms to the most complex human social formations. Yet sexuality is supposed to conform to a single standard […] [most] people find it difficult to grasp that whatever they like to do sexually will be thoroughly repulsive to someone else, and that whatever repels them sexually will be the most treasured delight of someone, somewhere.”

Rubin, 1984: p153-4

In the context of anormative gender and sexuality, the theory characterises a clear rejection of Hume’s Fact-Value distinction in its description of a context where factual truths (“is, and is not”) face a shift to moral statements (“an ought, or an ought not”) (Hume, 2003: Book III, Part I, Section I). It elucidates how the prevalent social institutions in the modern world often seek to assign moral values to personal actions, such as choice of partners or personal expression, without understanding the arbitrary nature of their claims. While one can spend much of their time arguing the morality of such a construction, in reality, the proponents of these institutions often aim to police personal actions which not only accentuates an unfair power structure but drives conflict between members of the community and the ones who propagate the current social status quo. The conflict thus derived, politicises even the most personal actions, making it essential to understand how personal actions become political and more so understand how this process affects and is affected by existing power hierarchies.

In this paper, I attempt to address the feminist adage “Personal is Political” in light of the queer movement and explore, through a review of literature, the development of the queer politics and how it interplays with other power structures to affect how members of the queer community occupy public spaces. I further attempt to extend the interactions of different political identities to understanding different forms of conflict within the queer community itself and lastly, address the identity politics ingrained in the LGBTQIA+ community as the root of the said conflict.

1 Development of the Queer Political Consciousness

For the members of the LGBTQIA+ community, history and personal experiences have made it abundantly clear that their individual choices are, more often than not, a political statement. The word “Queer” was used as a slur until the community reclaimed it as an identity—a symbol of “Pride” (Kornak, 2015). Soon, it was also picked up by academicians and activists. Many such as Judith Butler (Bulter, 1993) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Sedgwick, 1991) focused on developing “Queer Theories” looking at “Queer” as an intersectional cultural identity but others like Michael Warner (Warner, 1993), Shane Phelan (Phelan, 1997) and Lauren Berlant (Berlant and Warner, 1997) were the pioneers who began to use “Queer” as a political concept. In “Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet”,  Michael Warner went even further and wrote:

“The preference of “queer” represents, among other things, an aggressive impulse of generalization; it rejects a minoritizing logic of toleration or simple political interest-representation in favour of a more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal.”

Warner , 1993: p16

This was one of the early attempts to see queer as the radical contestation of social norms rather than a simple socio-political identifier. The language developed by Warner and others like Berlant went beyond using it to describe a collective consciousness that aims to oppose the marginalisation of sexual and gender minorities. They saw “Queer” as a “world-making project” (Berlant and Warner, 1997: p558), and a dynamic concept that is always learning from the diverse feelings and experiences of its members, and as Jacek Kornak puts it in his thesis —“a basis for a utopian project” (Kornak, 2015: p76).

The challenges that the community has faced and still faces today are impossible to resolve at a personal level. LQBTQIA+ individuals have had to actively push back against centuries of oppressive laws (Beyrer, 2014) and intense discrimination around the world (Harper and Schneider, 2003; Botswick, 2014). It was unavoidable that queer individuals find a way to come together and demand their rights. Even before the first major gay rights movements in post-WWII America, there were active communities of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender individuals in places like Harlem and Greenwich Village in New York and attempts to create advocacy groups (Pruitt, 2019). However, because of the prevalent social conditions and cultural stigma, they failed to bring the movement to a flashpoint. Stigma against public discourse has also played an enormous role in how social institutions strive to control the activities of the community which results in the general audience pushing away the issues faced by anormative individuals as issues of the private domain. The stigma further leads to the erasure of the identities and experiences of the members of the community. It was not until the homophile movement, and finally, the Stonewall riots did the efforts of activists and advocacy groups reach what Kenji Yoshino called “the gay tipping point” (Yoshino, 2009: p1537) that, over time, brought the gay rights issues into the overton window and triggered the visible and persistent movement now known as the LGBT rights movement that has inspired the queer community around the world to strive for visibility and recognition.

The queer community’s struggles are not limited to the legislature and legal recognition. They regularly deal with the institutions of cisnormativity, heteronormativity, allonormativity all under the overarching theme of patriarchy. Even the simplest of choices about things like who they choose to be intimate with or even which washroom they use become a struggle against the normative social institutions. The politicisation of personal issues was a matter of certainty because without recognising the collective “Queer” consciousness, the movement would fail to take even the first step towards dismantling the oppressive social, cultural and political institutions faced. The transition from cultural activism to an active representation of “Queer” in political theory was not only essential but also unavoidable. It was an essential step toward the building of a unifying language that aims at enhancing the ability to think as a collective. Many early LGBTQIA+ organisations recognised this. Martin Duberman, a playwright and pioneering LGBTQ historian, described the Gay Liberation Front, a post-stonewall gay-rights group, as an “overtly anti-religious, anti-nuclear family, anti-capitalist, and antiwar” and also anti-racist and anti-patriarchal organisation (Duberman, 2018: p16) who, he writes:

“[...] did something few of us ever attempt. They named what a better society might look like, thus establishing a standard by which to measure the alternating currents of progress and defeat.”

Duberman 2018: p20

The Gay Liberation Front, much like Warner did later, recognised the importance of queer as the rejection of norms rather than a community that simply aims to normalise its identity and strives to join the same institutions that oppress it. 

While the first essential step has always been to decriminalise anormative identities and expression in regions where it is illegal, many queer movements around the world have adopted a narrative that attempts to fall in line with the existing social institutions rather than reject them, primary of which is the demand for marriage equality (Paternotte, 2015). Duberman further illustrates in his book “Has the gay movement failed?” (Duberman, 2018) that in order to achieve marriage equality, the gay rights movement in America made two claims each with either own consequences: (1) homosexuals are not sexual outlaws; (2) homosexuality is immutable (Gessen, 2019). By discarding an agenda with a focus on sex-liberation, and embracing an essentialist “born this way” narrative thus denying the fluidity and the social constructionist nature of gender and sex, the movement has failed to protect the most vulnerable and oppressed members. It is my understanding that Queer movements around the globe are currently at a crossroads, and what they choose to do now with determine the overall success of the movement.

2 Politics in the Public Space: A Story of Queer Intersectionality

Despite the growing activism and social movements, the personal lives and experiences of the community are still heavily regulated by the prevalent norms, especially in public space. The socio-political institutions affect how the members of the LGBTQIA+ community occupy the public space in many ways. Studies in “Geographical Queer Theory” have tried to explore this idea under a framework within public space research have been focused on the disputes over the creation of “Queer Spaces” and perception of inclusivity of different public spaces. A study from St. Louis in the United States found that explicit Queer-Inclusive Spaces and familiar places were perceived as a safe space for free expression of identity while other places like upscale areas were characterised by behavior modification to reduce perceived risk (Sanschagrin, 2011). The fear faced by the community is not unfounded as there have been many cases of extremist violence against gender and sexual minorities around the world (Waters and Yacka-Bible, 2017; Smyth and Jeness, 2014), thus the expression of their identity in public, whether it be holding their partner’s hand while walking or wearing a dress is a socio-political symbol of rejecting the norms at the risk of their lives. 

Another example of public space usage by the LGBTQIA+ community that has been politicised is the use of gendered public spaces such as washrooms. Many conservatives and Trans-exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) often claim that allowing trans and non-binary individuals access to women’s washrooms increases the risk of sexual predators attacking women by identifying as women themselves, despite the lack of any evidence for the same for countries where inclusive laws have been passed (Jones and Slater, 2020; Borello, 2016). A study from Ontario, Canada, a country that is typically regarded to be highly inclusive, reported that 70% of trans people had received a negative reaction including abuse when using a public washroom and 57% of them avoid using public washrooms which can lead to a considerable increase in risk for UTIs (Scholar and Scholar, 2014). In a highly stigmatised country such as India, the risks are much higher, and individuals are often met with violence and hostility. Even after government recognition of the third gender identity, gender-neutral washrooms have not been provided in most regions of the country (George, 2020).

Queer Spaces have always played an important role in the lives of LGBTQIA+ individuals not only a place where they can express themselves in public but also as a site of resistance. Public space scholars such as Beverley Skeggs have argued that visible and territorialized places, typically clusters of commercial establishments like bars or cafes or residences, with high concentrations of queer residents are imbued with political meaning - a symbol of queer legitimacy, visibility, and recognisability (Skeggs and Moran, 2014). Skeggs in “Queer as Folk: Producing the real of urban space” argues that:

“One of the central operations that produce the effect of space is representation [...] The conversion of place into space intervenes to produce an ‘authenticity’ that enables political claims to be made and contested.”

Skeggs, 2004: p1839 

The simple act of communal occupation of a place, creating a queer space, can give it a political significance, that historically have become the birthplace of social justice movements. This can also be interpreted as the guiding principle behind Pride Events such as Pride Parades and Bloc Parties. It is also important to recognise that the political resistance of queer spaces need not necessarily be overt, they can be invisible to outsiders and yet hold political meaning, much like the routine meetings of the informal queer network in public locations  of Ul’ianovsk, a city in Russia, a country known to be anti-LGBT (Stella, 2012).

Just as queer spaces create politics, queer spaces are also influenced by the external politics. Many other socio-political forces have also contributed to the development of queer spaces, and often these are highly intersectional issues. A study contrasting the development of queer spaces in the liberal-normalizing climate of Madrid, Spain and the conservative-repressive climate of Tehran, Iran found that neoliberal-conservative political dichotomy was not the only influencing factor for the development of queer spaces (Lakshari, 2018). The commercialisation of sexual politics and capitalistic influences on the local politics of the liberal queer community in Madrid has led to gentrification and class exclusion driving the development of new alternative queer spaces in low-income neighbourhoods. On the other hand, the religious influence of conservative Islam has led to the militarisation and direct exclusion of sexual and gender minorities in the already secretive queer community in Tehran.

Further, it was found that the queer community in Tehran is often linked with prostitution, an association that is very similar to the perception of Hijras in India. Due to this negative portrayal, the upper-class queer community has been displaced to more affluent neighbourhoods contributing to class exclusion in the movement for sexual freedom. This phenomenon is very similar to what is also observed in India, where Hijra communities are often seen as beggars and prostitutes in urban areas (Heifetz, 2017). Often the activists fighting for sexual freedom belong to a privileged section of the society who do not understand the needs and experiences of the disadvantage. Individuals are often influenced by other socio-political factors such as class which further drives conflict within the community, and my own experience serves as a witness. As an upper-middle-class individual from a relatively liberal family, I have found it difficult to relate to the Hijra community despite the similarity in struggles against the normative social institutions. 

3 Clash of identities within the Queer community

The LGBTQIA+ community is not free from the influence of politics and institutions that they do not challenge directly. There have been many cases —documented and undocumented— of bigotry in the form of racism, casteism, extreme nationalism, religious and neurological discrimination within the queer community. Queer people of colour face not only systemic racism but also suffer at the hands of queerphobia and often receive no support from the whole community (SFAF, 2020). Research from Stonewall found that 61% of the ethnic minority in LQBTQIA+ communities of the USA face racist behavior on dating apps (Hunte, 2020). In a caste-minded country like India, the institution of marriage has historically served to protect not only heterosexuality but also caste purity making the fight for LGBTQIA+ marriage rights is not only a struggle against heteronormativity and cisnormativity but also casteist ideology (Ranganathan, 2020). 

The rise of extreme nationalism and religious discrimination has also driven a wedge within the Queer community in India. The LGBTQIA+ organisations involved in the organisation of the Pune Pride Parade 2020 were divided in their support of the NRC-CAA bill passed by the Narendra Modi-led BJP administration and in a very short time, this led to the already small and marginalised queer community getting divided into smaller groups at constant odds with each other (Kulkarni, 2020). The 2020 Mumbai “Queer Azadi” Pride Parade was cancelled because of suspected links with NRC-CAA protests (Rao, 2020). Similar trends have been observed in the West, especially with the rise of LGBT conservatism and Trumpist LGBT right-wing, leading to aggravated conflict between different queer communities (Mahdawi, 2017). Further, a public interest litigation in Delhi HC for recognition of same-sex couple under the Hindu Marriage Act was recently filed by individuals who are known to be vocal supporters of an extremist right-wing organisation RSS. Their decision to challenge only the Hindu Marriage Act rather than all personal laws can be interpreted as a means to further the vilification of other religions and also suggests a move towards the saffronisation of the queer movement putting the vulnerable Muslim and Dalit queers at risk (Sal, 2020).

Neurological discrimination is a considerably important issue faced in the queer community. Recent biological evidence seems to suggest that the incidence of neuroatypical phenotypes is higher within the LGBTQIA+ community that is likely due to the common source of variation in neurological ability and diversity in gender identity, i.e. prenatal exposure to sex hormones (Warrier, 2020). Evidence also suggests that autistic individuals are also more likely to identify as LQBTQIA+ (George and Stokes, 2018; Pecora, 2016). Nevertheless, due to media misrepresentation and lack of access to resources except for a relatively small collection of literature that explores their intersectional experiences, the neurodivergent community faces a significant amount of marginalisation characterised by the lack of awareness even within the queer community. Interestingly, the story of autism and queer share a rarely known common history, but while the queer movement had considerable emancipation in its journey, the autistic community was left behind. This is the story of conversion therapy. Margaret F. Gibson from the University of Waterloo in a brilliant article titled “Disturbing Behaviors: Ole Ivar Lovaas and the Queer History of Autism Science” attempted to queer the history of autism and brought to light the shared history of pathologisation of both queer and autism in the form of the work of Ole Ivar Lovaas, the pioneer of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) and a major proponent of gay and transgender conversion therapy under the “Feminine Boy Project” (Gibson, 2018). Gibson writes:

“The rationale for both areas of Lovaas’s work was largely theoretical, with autism and then gender non-conformity selected as excellent opportunities through which to justify the power and promise of behaviorism […] These were systematic attempts to slap, shout, reward, shock, and ignore autistic and gender non-conforming behaviors out of children.”

Gibson, 2018: p4

Both the ABA, which many call “autism conversion therapy”, and LQBTQ conversion therapy share the same methodologies and principles. Even the justification given for both these practices followed a paternalistic thought process, claiming both processes would treat the debilitating social handicaps faced by “gender-disturbed boys” and “autistics” (Gibson, 2018). Gay and Transgender Conversion therapies undergone significant criticism in recent times for being dehumanising, coercive and violent and thus have faced intense pushback and even criminalisation in certain parts of the world (Drescher, 2016). On the other hand, ABA is still considered the most common form of therapy for autistic children, and the fact that the LGBTQIA+ community, who have been and still are oppressed by the same system, are often ignorant or lack vocal support for the movement for the protection of neuro-divergent individuals, speaks of a double standard within the queer community.

Further, many other forms of bigotry have developed within the community such as bisexual, non-binary, asexual and aromantic erasure. Erasure refers to any process by which the existence or legitimacy of an identity is questioned or denied outright. A study in the Journal of Bisexuality surveyed the use of language in LGBT-rights litigation and jurisprudence and found significant evidence of bisexual invisibility in legal discourse across the world (Marcus, 2018). Several studies have found out that the incidence of bisexuality is possibly comparable if not greater than strict homosexuality (Baral, 2018). However, at the same time they suffer greater erasure, higher rates of discrimination and suicide, disproportionately worse financial conditions and health outcomes, especially in highly marginalised youth (Marcus, 2015; Movement Advancement Project, 2016; Elia, 2014). In a review published in 1999, Kenji Yoshino explored the erasure of the bisexual identity in legal and political discourse as an “overlapping interest” of strict homosexuals and strict heterosexuals (Yoshino, 1999). Yoshino argued that (1) the stabilisation and binarisation of exclusive sexual orientation categories (2) the retentions of the primacy of sex as a diacritical trait and (3) the protection of monogamy as the normative are possibly a few common goals shared by gays and the straights that have led to bisexual erasure. Thus, the automatic tendency of society to categorise or even strictly binarise identities (Liberman, 2017), the fear of “sex-blindness” that threatens the social institutions of sexual politics, the tendency to question and often dismiss the stability of bisexual attraction and to conflate the ideas of bisexuality and polyamory are possibly all factors that have contributed to the erasure of the bisexual identity within and beyond the queer community.

A very similar perspective can provide an explanation for the erasure of Non-binary and Intersex individuals who also threaten patriarchy and human tendencies of social categorisation by dismissing the concept of the gender and sex binary (Suárez and Slattery, 2018). Non-binary erasure is something almost every non-binary individual has faced atleast once in their life, a key example of which is the refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns by dismissing them as “grammatically wrong” which is a widespread phenomenon, even in the queer community. Asexual and aromantic individuals are often stereotyped as ‘prudes’ or ‘sociopaths’ and also face many other forms of micro-aggressions such as invalidation, pathologisation, dehumanisation, and rejection on a daily basis, and often are victims of sexual pressure, threats and assault/corrective rape (Gupta, 2017; Deutsch, 2018; Emens, 2014). Asexuality not only threatens the normative institutions of sexual politics but dismisses sexual power as an essential dynamic of human life —homosexual and heterosexual alike— and thus as expected, the opposition to asexual communities is not limited to outside the queer community as is clear from the many attempts to exclude asexual/aromantic individuals from Pride events (Mosbergen, 2017; Pennington, 2018). All of these examples make it clear that the queer community is not free from the influence of identity politics beyond the realms of gender and sexuality.

4 The Dangers of Identity Politics

The conception of ‘identity politics’ is attributed to the Combahee River Collective, a black socialist lesbian feminist collective active in Boston in the 1970s who identified a need for the development of their autonomous politics to understand and describe their intersectional experiences (Combahee River Collective, 1983). The liberal ‘identity politics’ that followed has often relied on a Nozickian notion of justice in the rectification of past injustices (Nozick, 1974) and sought to redress major historical wrongs through mobilisation and utilising political institutions to secure rights. The Queer movement too, has relied on this self-same principle and demanded the affirmation and acceptance of marginalised identities as a political movement for social change. The movement has majorly been focused on the reevaluation of normative social values associated with particular identities and has attempted to redefine and demystify the stereotypes to build a positive and socially acceptable image. However, there are consequences to this approach that have become clear over time.

In an essay titled “Rising Above Identity Politics: Sexual Minorities and the Limits of Modern Recognition”, Lucien Carrier, a student at the University of Glasgow, identified that the Gay Rights Movement that heavily relied on identity politics has failed to bring emancipatory change in the western world and further reinforced institutions that promote exclusion by becoming regulatory tools for the oppressive social structures (Carrier, 2017). The examples of erasure that we saw earlier also support the same idea. Carrier further recognised the need for a modern reinterpretation of the concepts of ‘identity’—as a power relation rather than an abstraction— and ‘recognition’ —as the contestation of social structures rather than acceptance— in order to redirect the movement toward emancipation. The continuous push towards validation of the individual’s identity has led to a fragmentation of the community based on disagreements, especially over identities external to the movement. Asad Haider, the author of “Mistaken Identities: Race and Class in the Age of Trump,” writes in his book,

“The framework of identity reduces politics to who you are as an individual and gaining recognition as an individual, rather than your membership in a collectivity and the collective struggle against an oppressive social structure. As a result, identity politics paradoxically ends up reinforcing the very norms it set out to criticize.”

Haider, 2018: p19-20

Asad attributes this paradox to a crisis for mass movements in 1977, particularly concerning racial justice, at which point the language of identity was individualised when faced with state repression and economic crises in the west. Asad also suggests that the reason for the over-reliance on identity politics is likely because of the loss of the language that came with mass movements which he thinks is essential for building solidarity. This same reductive tendency and lack of solidarity have manifested in the influence of external politics inside the queer community, as discussed earlier. 

This realisation is not new to the movement. Judith Butler, one of the early and renowned queer theorists, identified the paradox of identity politics that has become ingrained in the queer rights movement. In “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”, she writes:

“Is it not a sign of despair over public politics when identity becomes its own policy, bringing with it those who would “police” it from various sides? And this is not a call to return to silence or invisibility but rather to make use of a category that can be called into question, made to account for what it excludes.”

Butler, 1996: p311

This was originally written in 1990, but even now, identity politics is a guiding principle for a majority of the left-liberal movements. The equal rights movements in countries around the world still have predominantly focused on issues that demand recognition of particular identities rather than pushing for legislative changes that target the institutions responsible for the marginalisation of these identities. One could even argue that this tendency has made the political personal. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a greater degree of recognition as is evident from the rising number of articles, journalistic and literary, that acknowledges the fallacy of using identity as the basis for political action. 

Conclusion

The politicisation of the LGBTQIA+ rights movement has been a double-edged sword; On one hand, it has given anormative individuals an avenue to demand equal rights and protection from discrimination, on the other hand, the identity politics that has been a driving force of the movement has not only intensified conflicts between individuals but has given an opportunity for extremist groups to infiltrate communities, use the conflicts to their own benefit and drive wedges within the community for their political gains. Recently, a Youtuber, Ian Danskin from Innuendo Studies, in his series “The Alt-Right Handbook” explored how alt-right groups can abuse the politicisation of queer and feminist ideas, to push susceptible members of predominantly apolitical communities such as internet fandoms toward radicalism (Danskin, 2019). Through his analysis, Danskin suggests that these groups use incrementalist tactics to isolate and slowly indoctrinate individuals by first appealing to their reluctance towards making political statements online at the risk of losing the sense of belonging within online communities when faced with mildly discriminatory or hateful statements, and then slowly normalising more extreme ideas which are also often driven by identity politics as is clear from the predominantly cisgender, heterosexual white male demographics of alt-right movements.

It is clear that the second and third waves of Feminist movement, the Stonewall movement and the successive Queer activism have all served a similar purpose in breaking down the hierarchies of what is considered political and what is considered personal (Bose, 2017; Singleton, 2009). They, in a way, have driven us towards a more politically aware society—a society that realises that there is no way to separate our individual lives from politics of the world- especially amongst the marginalised. While it is vital for all to recognise that ‘Personal is Political’, it is also crucial that we remember that ‘Political lies beyond the Personal’. We have to acknowledge that the movement has become plagued with toxic individualism in the form of identity politics. As many previous scholars and activists have suggested, we need a radical shift in how the queer community strives for equality in rights and capabilities and freedom from discrimination and harassment with a greater focus on the collective identity over the individual. In Martin Duberman’s words, the community needs to recognise that:

“Singly and together, we span the horizon, our uniqueness as telling as the traits we share in common. Our states of being are neither fixedly predetermined nor airtight, and our fluid, contradictory natures themselves sit atop a barely buried hodgepodge of anarchic, not entirely controllable impulses. We’re all “gender discordant,” we’re all sexual outlaws.”

Duberman, 2018: p204-5

It is this understanding that should guide the queer community towards solidarity, not in recognition by oppressive institutions but a persistent contestation of the oppressive social norms. Even now, there are many who, by virtue of their privilege, still live under the illusion of being outside the sphere of political influence and many who abuse the politicisation of identity for their own gains. We can only hope that the actions taken by the collective consciousness of the oppressed are slowly contributing to a change that will contribute to creating a more humane and just society.

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