Why we need to keep fighting

You would not believe how long it has taken me to find a topic for this blog. With everything that has been going on the last couple of years with important elections across the world, you would have thought there would be ample choices and therein lies the problem. Too much bloody choice!

It is the early days of the second Trump presidency and I have joined the twitterodus (X-odus) and the facebook excrement show, and headed to blue sky. I mentioned it to a colleague and he told me he had abandoned all social media because it made him too angry. Our other colleagues agreed with him and nothing I said about why there was still a need to be present had an impact. Maybe I am just obstinate and argumentative I thought but having a brood on it for a few days has helped coalesce my thoughts.

We can all see what is happening, mainly in the US, but also across the world. So far Trump has begun rounding up people with brown and black skin that are suspected of being in the US illegally, has rolled back all DEI programmes, freed convicted felon’s who committed sedition, destroyed transgender rights and that is just a start. In Iran they have changed the law so female children as young as 9 years old can be married. In Afghanistan it feels that every week or so there is another limitation placed on the freedom of women, not that they had much to begin with. Even in the UK we have stopped treatments for transgender children and do nothing material about the growing problems of violence against women and girls, or in driving reductions to the gender pay gap.

It has been like this throughout history. Women have been marginalised, excluded, and ignored in almost every aspect and every culture. Fifty years ago in the UK we began the journey to equality but were told things couldn’t change overnight, that they needed to happen organically, we couldn’t just pay women more or give them the higher paid jobs, because the men might then feel marginalised. Being excluded from power gives women very quiet voices, less chance to organise. Social media changed this. For example, without social media I think that we would never be talking openly about menopause as we do now, which has changed the way women women continue to participate in society long after the age where our mothers would have locked themselves back in the home. It changed because the number of women you could talk to increased. No longer did you have to rely on your mother or an aunt or sister to give you information about the changes that were happening, usually in hushed tones as if you should be ashamed for being so old. And that is just one example. Without social media Me Too would never have happened, Giselle Peicot’s heroism would have gone unnoticed, and we would all continue to believe that assault on women was because of one or two bad apples rather than something systemic and the result of patriarchy.

Of course, it is not just women social media had helped. You can see parallels in almost every marginalised community. Social media helps everyone. Of course, it can be abused. It can be manipulated, not least by the people running it, or the savvy tech guys with their algorithmic feeds. But too not engage at all leaves us back. silently fuming in our kitchens, felling alone and frustrated that nothing will ever change. Maybe, if you are a white male as most of my colleagues are, that is fine. Society is already constructed for your benefit, whether that is in leading corporations, in education, in arts or in medicine. You don’t need to organise or to feel connected to others because you are already on the inside.

So my advice is to be angry at what you see online but respond with positivity. Put out your opinions, Speak up in defence of what is right. Point out the hypocrisy. But most of all, curate your feeds. Don’t exclude everyone who has a different opinion but block those who seek to inflame. Not everyone you meet online is as well informed or well adjusted as you and you do not have to change everyone’s mind. But make your voice heard. Don’t give up and don’t let them win.