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Ever come across a conversation about a social justice issue and wondered: “Don’t you have more important issues to worry about?”
You’re sure not the only one – but before you join the crowd of people asking this question, check out what Riley J. Dennis has to say about it.
Riley gets this question often, and she has a really good point about what you’re missing if you’re demanding to know why someone who cares about one issue isn’t focusing on other important ones.
Activists are really tired of this question – so let’s settle this once and for all.
With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism
Click for the Transcript
[Black and white] “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? Aren’t there more important issues to talk about?”
I hear this argument a lot when I talk about pretty much anything, which leads me to believe that it’s not actually about one specific issue. It’s about discrediting everything I’m saying without actually addressing my argument.
Because if you think about it, this is the perfect argument. There’s always going to be something more serious than the thing you’re talking about. If you’re talking about income inequality in the United States, why aren’t you talking about global poverty? If you’re talking about being transgender in the US, why aren’t you talking about anti-trans laws in other countries? Even if you’re talking about something like gun violence, why aren’t you talking about the people killed by cars every year?
The thing is, these kinds of arguments work for anything. You don’t have to find any kind of flaw in someone’s reasoning to use it. You don’t have to put in any actual effort to give them constructive criticism or try to have a positive dialogue – you just have to shout your one line and move on, proud to have successfully told someone else how they are allowed to spend their time and energy.
But what people who use this type of argument fail to realize is that it is possible to care about multiple issues at once. We can talk about income inequality in the US and global poverty. We can talk about being transgender here and abroad. We can talk about ways to prevent gun violence and make cars safer.
Talking about one issue doesn’t automatically negate all other issues. Saying that gun violence is a problem that we must address doesn’t mean it is the only thing killing us. We can recognize that there are all sorts of problems in the world, but we can’t all care about and talk about every issue at the same time.
Some people are going to focus on preventing gun violence; some people are going to focus on car safety; some people are going to focus on preventing animal cruelty; some people are going to focus on finding a cure for cancer. You can care passionately and devote a lot of time to one of these things and still care about the others. It would just be physically impossible for someone to dedicate all of their time to all of the issues in the world – there are just too many.
Often, we talk about what we have experience with. I can tell you what it’s like being a white trans person in the US, but I can’t tell you what it’s like to be a deaf person in Germany. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about accessibility in Germany, it just means that that’s not my focus, nor is it really my place. We can each talk about what affects us and try to uplift each other’s voices, but it would be wrong of me to try to talk about the experience of being a deaf German. So I talk about the stuff I know, the stuff I have experience with, and the stuff I am passionate about. And somehow, I still care about lots of other stuff outside that.
And people who make this argument try to make it a competition. Like, “Your oppression is not as bad as their oppression, so why are you even talking about yours?” And again, this comes down to talking about what we know. Of course I still care about transgender rights around the world, but I have the most experience with what I face in the US. The fact that some trans people around the world face much worse oppression than me is something I openly recognize, but that doesn’t mean that trans people in the US have achieved perfect equality.
Very rarely is anything completely black or white. There are levels of nuance to everything, including oppression or the seriousness of different issues. Just because someone somewhere has it bad, that doesn’t mean everyone else is living in absolute perfect equality – and yes, their problems still matter.
A lot of the time, addressing one issue is just a small piece of breaking down an entire system. When we fight against one sexist problem, we’re not saying that all other sexist problems are irrelevant; in fact, we’re saying that all of these problems derive from similar ideas of sexism that we’re working to eliminate.
If you have a problem with someone’s argument, that’s okay, but focus on addressing their argument rather than screaming, “What about all this other stuff??”
Aren’t there more important things we could be talking about? Well, probably. But I’ve gotten this comment enough times that I thought it was worth addressing. If you have suggestions for things I could address in future videos, you’re welcome to leave them in the comments. The thing about making YouTube videos is that I’m constantly looking for content, so if I’m not talking about something today, I could talk about it tomorrow.
This video is a part of a series I’m doing for Everyday Feminism, a website dedicated to helping you stand up to and break down everyday oppression. I’ll leave a link down below so you can check out my previous videos in the series.
Please don’t forget to subscribe and share this video if you liked it! Thanks so much for watching. Bye!
Riley J. Dennis is a Contributing Vlogger for Everyday Feminism. She’s a polyamorous, atheist, gender non-binary trans woman with a passion for fiction writing, feminism, and technology. She got her BA from Whittier College in 2015 doing a self-designed major called Writing Worlds, a mixture of creative writing and anthropology, focused on realistic fictional world building. Find her on her YouTube channel, Twitter @RileyJayDennis, or her website RileyJayDennis.com.
