This blog post was originally published as a subscriber-only article entitled “Yopp’s Guide to Being an Awesome Ally,” at the beginning of January 2020. I decided to share it more widely because it was such valuable information and I also updated it as my opinions and understanding of allyship had shifted over the years. CN: broad discussion of oppression I once saw a post from someone somewhat new to social activism saying he wished there …Read More
Category: 100 Level
An educational resource on social justice topics, sorted by level of difficulty.
What Does It Mean When a Group Has Power?
CN: sexual assault, racism, chattel slavery, ableism, trans-antagonism, mention of suicide and murder rate statistics. When discussing oppressed and privileged groups, you’ll frequently hear me talk about who in the interaction has the most power. But why is identifying the power in an interaction so important and what do I mean when I say a group has power? For a person or a group to have power refers to the ability to make certain choices …Read More
What Is Socialization?
CN: physical abuse, mention of discrimination based on race, body type, and gender, mention of retaliation to sexual assault reporting. Consider the following puzzle: A man and his girlfriend are going to a fancy dinner party, and the man arrives wearing the T-shirt and jeans he’s been wearing all day. His girlfriend is upset, insists he change into something else, messes with his hair etc. The girlfriend is stressed out that her partner would go …Read More
Explaining Privilege Part 1: WHAT Is Privilege?
CN: discussion of consequences of oppression Let’s talk about “privilege.” It’s a big concept and a word that’s used so frequently, to many people it’s meaningless. It’s often misinterpreted to mean “out of touch,” “your life is perfect,” or sometimes, just “you suck.” But it actually means none of those things. What Is Privilege? Privilege is the ability to receive social, financial, and institutional benefits based on a trait you have that society considers desireable. …Read More
Who Is Marginalized?
CN: Mention of serious effects of oppression, specific to race, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, physical and mental ability, class and religion. There are a number of traits for which people are oppressed, and these traits fall into a number of categories. A crucial idea in understanding the premise of social justice is that for each category, there is a group that our society currently considers “default,” “normal,” or “neutral” and anyone outside of that …Read More
Content Notes
CN: mental illness, PTSD At the beginning of most of my posts, I’ll be using a note that starts “CN” followed by a list of certain topics and themes. CN stands for Content Note. Here I’m going to talk about what content notes or content warnings are, why I use them, and why I use them as opposed to trigger warnings. Trigger Warnings You’ve probably heard of trigger warnings, which have gained a lot of …Read More