In 2018, young people refused the status quo. On February 14, a mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida left 17 people dead. Rather than allowing this cycle of violence to continue, the student survivors launched a massive youth-led movement for common sense gun safety reform.  The “March for Our Lives” in Washington, D.C., helped to galvanize gun-control supporters. States across the country, including 14 with Republican governors, enacted 50 new laws restricting access to guns in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas shooting in Parkland, Florida.

“Legislators are starting to realize that mass shootings can happen in their state anytime,” said Allison Anderman, the managing attorney at the Giffords Law Center, a gun-control organization founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who survived a shooting in 2011. “And they don’t want to be in a position that this kind of thing can happen in their state at all.” State lawmakers still managed to expand gun access with at least 10 new laws in seven states. These measures — from allowing guns in K-12 schools to bolstering “stand your ground” laws — continued to carry weight in certain parts of the country, even as the gun-control movement steadily gained steam elsewhere.

Mass shootings are common in this country. According to the Gun Violence Archive, an oft-cited nonprofit that tracks shootings. Mass shootings are defined as attacks where there are four or more fatal and nonfatal injuries, not including the shooter. Appalling shootings involving students aren’t new either. There have been more than 260 school shootings since the national consciousness was shaken in 2012 when 20 first-graders and six school staff were slaughtered in Newtown, Connecticut, Gun Violence Archive data show, but when the words “enough is enough” rang out from the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, all of them members of the mass shooting generation — the millions born after Columbine in 1999, who practiced “code red” drills at school their entire lives — lawmakers started listening.

We learn something different from each woman Alicia Garza, Aleichia Williams and Gloria Anzaldua. Identity politics has become a punching bag of liberals and conservatives alike. Identity politics, particularly the “identity” part can help shape our understanding of the problems marginalized people face. It is an inevitable stage that we must pass through in our journey towards universal human rights. It is an immutable characteristic, one that could be changed, but which no one should be required to change. I believe all women deserve to be powerful, every day we confront things that we believe we have no control over. Honestly, I’m not sure what I would like to learn more about, politics is mind boggling, but I will say as a black African American woman I would like to gain knowledge of more women empowerment, working collectively to resolve these issues, how to understand these new terms that surround the LGBTQ community and continue to educate myself on these political issues that we do face even if it does give me a headache.

The Collective was basically saying that both the white feminist movement and the Civil Rights movement were not addressing their particular needs as Black women and more specifically, as Black lesbians. The Collective also place an emphasis upon their own relationships to their oppression and how this shaped their identities. The CRC describes oppression as “interlocking” or happening simultaneously, thus creating new measures of oppression and inequality. In other words, Black women could not quantify their oppression only in terms of sexism or racism, or homophobia experienced by black lesbians.

Furthermore, these women built on those observations by continuing to analyze the roots of Black woman’s oppression under capitalism and arguing for the organization of society based on the collective needs of the oppressed. Understanding the particular experience of Black women as compared to white women and Black men, which also created entry points for Black women to engage in politics. In fact, through the term “identity politics,” I believe they are encouraging a politic that focuses upon the direct need to liberate Black women. If more groups took a stance and followed the movement, we would not witness women, queer cultures, and people of color being continuously oppressed and marginalized.

Women are an oppressed class whose oppression is total and affecting every facet of our lives. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants and cheap labour. We are considered inferior beings whose only purpose is to enhance a man’s life. Realizing that the liberation of women will ultimately mean the liberation of men from destructive role as oppressor, we have no illusion that men will welcome this liberation without a fight.

The problem is never the housework itself, but housework not being truly respected as work. Pat Mainardi wrote the “The Politics of Housework,” argues that while the men struggle to do it the women must continue to enforce it in order to redefine their roles within the house. I feel some women don’t have an issue sharing the housework but shouldn’t have to do it on a man’s schedule. A man’s accomplishments have always depended on getting help from other people, mostly women. What man would accomplish what he did if he had to do his own housework?” Meaning, oppression is built into the system. Participatory democracy begins at home. If you are planning to implement your politics, there are certain things to consider. Men lose leisure while we gain it, the measure of our oppression is their resistance.

Anne Koedt is teaching us that we should redefine our sexuality, discard the normal concepts of sex. She argues that the very idea of vaginal orgasm stemmed from Freud’s own hang up and his belief in the inferiority of women to men. Womens bodies need to be addressed to help equalize men and women’s social roles and properly ensure the health and welfare of women. Koedt conceded that some orgasms can be experienced from “sexual fantasy” but she maintained that even though the cause is psychological the physical sensation, be it localized or more diffuse, necessarily takes place in the sexual organ equipped for sexual climax.

As women understand that we make up a vital part of the economic and social fabric that hold communities together, yet the work we do is rarely valued at the same level as in men’s work. Women are disproportionately likely to be poor, under- educated, employed in low-wage or unpaid work and subject to dismissal for getting married or having children. You’ll come to realize that in many industries, female workers are systematically denied their rights to regular pay and regular working hours.

Furthermore, some governments do little to combat gender discrimination at work and keep discriminatory labor laws on the books despite adopting guarantees of formal legal equality that might seem to conflict with those laws. In addition, women’s work promotes the well-being of families and children, even in two parent households. When governments make such distinctions among workers, they reinforce discriminatory social norms that undermine women’s position in the labor market and their access to economic security.

We’ve seen the difference that equal job opportunities, equal healthcare and education, equal decision-making power and freedom from violence can make. We’ve seen the difference when women are able to make their own choices and exercise their collective voice, and when institutions address their needs and interest. Why can’t women have a sense of belonging and feel empowered without being scrutinized for it? Were men and women really created equally? It seems one sided in my eyes. Achieving gender justice is not only a matter of basic rights. It’s also a key means of achieving fairer societies.

Although activism has brought about change, much controversy still surrounds it. Youth leaders are targeted by vigilantes and governments forces alike. When they are arrested, it is done for questionable reasons. I feel like instead of being a reason for prosecution, activism should be a right, a right that we’ve been longed denied for fear of being criticized for going against the status quo. Everyone has a voice and should be able to voice their thoughts without having to worry about what others think. People should be admired for how they take action on social issues, but who am I kidding because that will never happen, people don’t like to face the reality of things, they rather hide and just allow to have their way with them. It is the governments duty to make sure everyone matters, and that no one feels powerless or useless under their leadership, at the end of the day it is the people who put government officials in power, so us the people should be heard.