We Need to Change Social Justice

Throughout the many readings and videos covered in this module, I think the topic that stuck out to me as the most pertinent issue is the fact that over the last almost three decades we’ve made so little progress in the social justice for women and minorities. People are scared, in the society we live in people are scared to live. They’re scared to be alone at night, they’re scared to walk away from their drink for 3 minutes, they don’t go to the bathroom alone, and let’s not forget that some people fear telling society their gender or sexual identity due to every day is every day, time-lapse try and understand this.

Everyday people every day are excluded simply because some assume that gender is a binary, they think terms like “ladies”, “gentlemen”, or “guys” equally address every person; this just isn’t true. The Teen Vogue article written by Danielle Corcione makes a great point in saying, “replacing “ladies and gentlemen” with “everybody” helps include people who do not identify as ladies or gentlemen.

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” (Corcione, 2018, pg 1), I just wish people would think about the fact that there are nonbinary people everywhere and their feelings are just as important as binary people’s. In my life the number of times I’ve been in a group addressed as ‘hey guys’ is innumerable ―I literally couldn’t tell you. I never saw it as an issue until more recently.

I have worked hard to phase it out of my vocabulary and I owe that to my friends who identify as nonbinary; they deserve to be acknowledged and respected.

Joe Pinsker, author of The Problem With ‘Hey Guys’, said that “language can change ―and change back. Language evolution tends to be rather random.” (Pinsker, 2018, pg 3). I believe ‘guys’ every day a term that has developed and changed over time as we’ve discussed throughout this module, however, I do not believe it is a gender-neutral term, by any means. This term glorifies men and while men do sometimes deserve glory, using language-based around the male gender all the time can be detrimental to any progress we have made towards equality of all people. While we’ve made some progress, Pinsker quotes linguist John McWhorter who said, “I think there’s a serious and welcome reconception of gender lines and relationships between sex and gender going on” (Pinsker (McWhorter), 2018, pg 1), this is a ball we need to keep rolling! Not only should we be continuously checking ourselves, but our friends, “Language changes whether you like it or not.” (Pinsker (McWhorter), 2018, pg 3) ―make this the norm, and the strides toward gender equality will seem so much larger.

In addition to the change sexist language, we have got to change this society's responses to sexual harassment and assault. Feminists have been working towards this forever, it seems, but over the last 30 some-odd years the US still accuses the abused of lying or worse blames the abused for their abuse. The majority of assaults go unreported because of the fear associated with reporting ―shame, guilt, judgment, and blatant accusation of fault. Approximately 30% of sexual assaults are reported and 0.6% of rapists end up incarcerated (Bergvall (RAINN*), 2018, slide 9). These are ridiculous numbers, there is no excuse for these rates to be where they are. If men in power could get over the fact that they are in power and their sexist beliefs we could end the stigma around assault. If we end the stigma, assaulted people, I believe, would come forward following an abuse rather than keeping it to themselves. This would reduce the idea that someone is ‘lying’ about their situation on account of the time-lapse between the altercation and the report. Before this module, I knew nothing of the Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas case of 1991, after learning of this outsourcing and comparing it to the recent events between Balsey-Ford and Kavanaugh I was honestly disgusted, not only with our justice system but outourthe, commander in chief and any other person who doesn’t understand why this is means to be outraged. Innocent and hurt people are being denied justice by the literal Justice System, if that doesn’t seem like a problem to you then you are the problem.

In conclusion of the module 2 content, while difficult to read and watch at times, showed me the tough truth that is our government. I learned that not nearly as much progress has been made as people would like to believe. I gained a deeper understanding of people why women and minorities live the way they do, I learned why we’re raised to be so cautious ―it’s because our social justice system chooses not to hold men accountable for their actions and would rather shift the blame onto literally anyone else. In the United States justice is NOT being served and that needs to change.