Fight the small fights
It works!
BY Megan Griffith-Greene
Illustration by Dave Donald
When all six-and-a-half pounds of me came screaming into the world, Ontario law said that if my parents wanted to give me both their names, my father’s name had to come first—an edict that applied only because my parents were unmarried. My mother thought this was stupid, so, with equal parts pragmatism and rebellion, she fought the law.
It was 1976, so the fact that there were still sexist laws on the books isn’t too surprising. Rather than resignedly scrawling “Greene-Griffith” on my birth-certificate application, however, my mother appealed to a lawyer who fought to have this minor injustice reversed—which it was, two years later. It seems like a big bureaucratic mess for a small change, but it was worth it.
Our legal code remains full of vestiges of antiquated social norms, and these can and should be challenged, wherever possible, to bring the laws up to date with our evolving society. Towns and cities across the country have slowly shed outdated and unfair bylaws prohibiting everything from dancing without city permission to Sunday shopping and curfews for teenagers. A year ago, a legal challenge gave transgendered people the right to choose the gender of the officer who conducts the strip search, should they be arrested.
But there are still a lot of stupid laws (and policies) on the books. For starters, according to Ontario’s Education Act, one of the duties of a teacher is to “inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judeo-Christian morality” and the mistreatment of pets falls under property law. There are recent ones, too; Canadian Blood Services doesn’t allow sexually active gay or bisexual men to donate blood.
We live with small injustices all the time, either because we don’t know how, or don’t have time, to challenge them. After all, these fights can take years. We grumble to friends, tighten the little ball of bitterness and move on.
Why should we fight about small potatoes? Because in the end, bureaucratic injustice is not minor, it’s systemic; it builds a society based on unfair, outdated and contradictory values. I’ve told the story of my name a million times—it’s part of my personal mythology, and stays with me as a more interesting twist on the corny “one person can make a difference” mantra of activism. Fight great injustice, yes. But knock down the small ones too, one hyphen at a time.
