Conclusion - Connection to Social Work and Social Justice
The process of writing this blog forced me to think through the idea that the gender binary is a colonial concept. As someone who does not fit into gender, I see that the gender binary is something applied to me from the outside. Since I am a white settler, is the gender binary forced on me by colonialism, or by something else? Anti-racist practice among white people often focuses on the fact that the system dehumanizes us by making us oppressors. For example: "On a deeper level, members of dominant groups may suffer a loss of authenticity and humanity as a result of their unearned privilege and dominant position in society (Freire, 1972/2000). Brod (1987) argues that members of the dominant groups are so deeply harmed by their often unwitting participation in a system of oppression, that they would ultimately be better off with-out the unearned privileges resulting from the system of oppression" (Edwards 2006). My interpretation of this idea is that racism harms whit
