shed1njas:

“You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with our individual particular strengths. And in order to do that, we must allow our differences to exist at the same time as we recognize our sameness. If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed only against the external conditions of our oppression is not enough. In order to be whole, we must recognize the despair oppression plants within each of us – that thin persistent voice that says our efforts are useless, it will never change, so why bother, accept it. And we must fight that inserted piece of self-destruction that lives and flourishes like a poison inside us, unexamined until it makes us turn upon ourselves in each other.”

— Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s,” Sister Outsider