Since I began this blog, I have struggled with its purpose and format. Recently having entered graduate school in social work, I am, there too, struggling to find a way of being that I am comfortable with.
There are social rules within society that constrain us in the discussion of our personal lives. This constraint is magnified in social work, and the other helping professions, because of their reliance on dichotomies: helper and helpee, professional and patient, functional and dysfunctional, normal and abnormal.
In class, I make the case for oppressed groups; I raise my voice in favour of anti-oppressive social work practice. I take examples from journal and newspaper articles to expose the ways in which social work can act as an agent of social control, as opposed to one of social change. Here, on this blog, I have raged against the Calgary Downtown Association for their shameful ad campaign against panhandlers, and I have commented on violence against women, citing various statistics. Absent, from all of these discussions, is my authentic voice which honours my own life experiences.
Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as saying, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." With the recent passing of Rosa Parks, we are reminded that activism does not only take form in organized protest; it rises out of everyday demands for the world to be as we wish it to be. It seems obvious to us now that it was a horrific social practice to give preferential seating on the bus to white people, at the expense of black people. However, clearly for some time, it was a social practice accepted by everyone. Rosa Parks saw a world that could be different; by refusing to give up her seat, she actually physically illustrated a new world as she wished it. She revealed how her personal experience of taking the bus was inextricably linked to political forces and social structures.
We have to at least allow ourselves to draw inspiration from people like Gandhi and Parks. Myself, I wish to see a world in which: there is no sexual violence; children and women are not sold for sex; people aren't labeled as deviant, or abnormal, or crazy; help is genuine and kind...
I also wish for a world in which people can talk about their lives without shame. My blogging is going to get much more personal; I will speak about my own life experiences including some that are disturbing, like having been sexually assaulted and having suffered from severe depression. Some people might think 'big deal', and I am sure that there are people blogging about this sort of thing all over the web. But, for me, it is a big deal because it is a move towards speaking more openly about these things within my profession. I do not want to allow this blog to turn into boundless self exposure. I hope to couch discussions of my own experiences in the context of larger issues.
At the moment, I don't 'promote' my blog to friends, classmates, or family. (In fact, I think it might literally kill my mother.) I believe my concern that those I know might stumble across my writing is evidence in itself for the need to speak out. And so, as various issues arise in my daily life, I will share them through this blog, in an effort to make visible and central, those life experiences that are often rendered invisible and marginal. It is my hope that I will reveal that the personal is indeed the political.
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