Dear Past Me, it is not your job to change his mind

Dear Past Me, You don’t need to change his mind.
You don’t need to change the mind of any oppressive man. You do not need to convince him your experience is real. You do need him to admit he is wrong. You do not need to make him woke; you do not him to be woke. You don’t need him to have different opinions. You need to make his opinions irrelevant. You need to reduce the amount of power his opinions have to shape the world. That’s the change worth bringing, the only change that will last. Don’t forget that, when the hot Econ Major dudebro at the party mansplains that there’s no evidence for the gender wage gap. Tell him the facts, if you want. But remember your energy is better spent helping yourself and your fellow women make it into the government, onto the streets, into the media, into boardrooms, in academia, into the popular narrative, into any and all positions of power – so that there is less opportunity for men like the Econ Major Dudebro to create real life consequences with their ignorance.

Yusra Amjad