This week’s reading was finally when my brain was kind of bombarded with way too much information at once. I am still very intrigued with the material but getting through Allan Johnson’s Patriarchy, the system: An It, Not a He, A Them, Or an Us, was so much for me to digest at once because of how intertwined our existences are within the system. Ultimately, I understood Johnson’s point regarding how Patriarchy and oppression aren’t things we can control our participation in but rather how we decide to react to the daily routine of experiencing and witnessing them now especially after learning the ways in which we do take part. The way Johnson brought up the meaning of the word participation in regards to the system really struck me. He mentions how we all take “part in what goes on” as opposed to something that is “voluntary/ freely chosen” and I felt it was so important to have done that for my personal understanding of even trying to dissect the intersectionality within and how I am part of it. I found this reading so enlightening but at the same time completely overwhelming. I tend to get stuck on why we got here in the first place and it’s too frustrating thinking about how I partake in this because this is what’s been here since before I arrived to the planet so of course, it is the norm that was ingrained and at a subconscious level. I also want to share that what immediately struck me from Audre Lorde’s “There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions” was the publication date after reading, 1983. I’m having trouble verbalizing why but while reading, I envisioned it was written more recently.