Reality? Really?

“When those who have the power to name and socially construct reality and choose not to see you or hear you, whether you are dark skinned, old, disabled, female, or speak with a different accent or dialect than theirs, when someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked in a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that it is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul – and not just individual strength, but collective understanding – to resist this void, this non-being, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard, and to make yourself visible, to claim that your experience is just as real and normative as any other.” - Rich (1986)