While reflecting on Jess Whatcott’s “Still a Locked Door,” I wondered how much freedom we actually have whilst naively believing that everyone deserves equal opportunities and the ability to make their own choices. How much of these “privileges” actually exist when society has already decided who belongs and who doesn’t. Whatcott provides a very good analogy with a locked door; representing the invisible boundaries that society creates around certain groups of people according to what they believe is normal or not.
Society can claim to be progressing toward equality while still maintaining systems and practices that exclude people. Often, we associate blatant acts with discrimination but sometimes there are invisible barriers that are built within institutions and society collectively. Not everyone experiences the system equally, some people can have the same rights but still face complexity different limitation and boundaries even when trying to exercise these rights and freedoms and it is up to us as a society to be aware and as inclusive as we can and making productive steps towards these systems.
What specifically stood out to me was how we define inclusion and view responsibility. When someone struggles with access to opportunities, society faces that problem personally towards that individual and what they could do differently. A lot of this shifts attention and responsibility from institutions and systems in place for creating inequality and therefore being counterproductive. This places a heavy burden on the people experiencing this exclusion. Society is proven to be more comfortable making minimal adjusting to existing systems rather than questioning why those systems were exclusive in the first place. Collectively, we find ways to make these barriers appear less restrictive without really removing them.
It is extremely important in order to be a progressing society that we hold ourselves and institutions accountable as well as ourselves. We need to acknowledge that these barriers in our society actually exist and who all benefit’s from keeping them in place and why they continue to exist.
