Protesting at the Slut Walk in London, 2011
But this lead me to think: Who am I? Yes, I know: 'first world problems', I'm going to complain about not having anything to complain about. I am a white, working class, woman. So what's my problem? Can I campaign for gay rights, despite not being gay myself? Can I call for an end to Islamophobia even though I am white? What can I believe in?I recently wrote a PhD proposal on the Westernisation of Islamic states and was told that it wouldn't be an appropriate topic for me to write on as I am not an expert on the subject. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a PhD supposed to make you the 'expert'? As it stands, I have studied human rights and politics for 5 years and wrote a very nice Master's dissertation on the rights of women in Islamic states, yet, apparently, I am not qualified to write about this to PhD level. Would this be the same if I was a Muslim woman? If I had Islamic family members? Perhaps that would make me an 'expert'?
So what's left? What do I focus my life's studies on? The rights of women in rural England, perhaps? I want to be able to use the knowledge I gained in my degrees to help people, but who are those people? I care about the pressures faced by Islamic women and gay people in society, I care about people who are oppressed by their religion/society/government (and in many cases, other governments)... so how do I become the authority on this subject!?
