We are human beings, not a special interest group. Our desire to be treated as sovereign individuals without pressure to conform to commonly held ideals of acceptability should not make us radical or revolutionary. We do not need special laws to be created to govern our humanity, instead, we need the laws that deny our freedom of expression to be removed.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are noble aspirations in a world filled with violence and bigotry but simultaneously an example of how capitalists have taken ideas aimed at fostering unity to divide us. The social justice movement has gained momentum and DEI policies give the impression of making strides at ushering in a more equitable world. Alas, within the confines of a capitalist framework, such ideals are virtually unimplementable. Instead, we are forced to debate our humanity because those who deny difference maintain their power and insist that we tolerate their intolerance.
The current status quo has created a situation where corporations are afforded more rights than humans and simultaneously tasked with parenting a broken generation. Progressive corporate values attract the disenfranchised and abused, conning them into thinking they’ve found the belonging they have craved for so long. Their birth parents were absent, slaves to the machine or, even worse, subjects of migrant labour to give their offspring the opportunities they never had.
Societies are crumbling all around us as the economy has been disproportionately valued so when we think of progress or success we tend to consider only financial terms with little regard for the impact on people and the planet. We can’t pay our way to mutual respect for our shared lives and livelihoods intertwined with our natural environment.
Our value is inherent as humans and we should not have to perform our suffering to be deemed worthy of our human rights. It is simple, but in a society awash with notions that some are more worthy than others we often face all manner of oppression being passed off as progress.
Try though I may, I cannot fathom how categorising people according to their differences is progressive. We certainly need to address the injustices inflicted on those deemed to be less worthy because they aren’t white cis-het men. Still, we also need to dismantle the continued classification of humans according to the divisions imposed by Western imperialists.
We often call for bodily autonomy, agency, and consent for everyone. Simply put, this means that each person has rights over their own body and cannot be dictated to how they may use their bodies provided they do not infringe on these rights of others. This is why we are determined to dismantle white-heteronormative-patriarchal-capitalism, a system of oppression that reduces us to the least interesting aspects of who we are.
When a group has held disproportionate power for such a long time it becomes hard to imagine a truly equitable path. By othering those we claim to be striving to include, are we not setting those othered folks up for a new form of insidious oppression? The ones who fit the “right profile” are emboldened to feel justified in their assertion that the marginalised are being afforded special rights.
Of course, their position is wildly inaccurate, however, if we fail to recognise the mindset that created the conditions for the convergence of crises we are facing to flourish, we will not be able to arrest the spread of misinformation pedalled by the ones who hold the power, privilege, money, and undue influence within the confines of the current neo-colonial capitalist framework.
What can we do? We can resist. We can love one another. We can tend to our gardens. We can stop buying what we are being sold and treat everyone we meet as human beings worthy of dignity, life, and liberty. We don’t have to re-enact the violence we have been subjected to. We can stop. We can create our world anew.