William, yes, my essay is completely self-centered. That’s intentional.

Have 400 years of personal testimony about the horrors of racism convinced you to commit to ending racism? Have the plethora of personal testimonies of suffering coming out of different feminist movements convinced you to commit to dismantling the patriarchy? Have the statistics about the abuse that GLBTQ people suffer convinced you to commit to the fight to end homophobia and transphobia? How about Native American genocide? Environmental exploitation? Shall I continue?

I’m guessing no, all that wasn’t enough. You’re still trying to argue about how you’re not implicated. It somehow wasn’t enough for me either. What convinced me was beginning to see the ways in which my acceptance of those sustained horrors showed that I had lost my humanity. That’s why I write — because there will never be enough testimony from the victims of systemic oppression to convince the straight White men to step down from our ill-gotten post as “leaders” — we have to be shown that it is our own humanity that is at stake. Hence my “self-centered” writing.