How Do We Change the System?
Isn’t the Whole Question
We’ve been trying to change the system for a long time.
We’ve been trying to change the structures that decide whose voices are heard and whose pain is dismissed. The social systems that reward silence and compliance over truth and care.
Justice systems.
Welfare systems.
Healthcare systems.
Education systems.
Social services.
Workplaces.
Patriarchy.
Rape culture.
Victim-blaming narratives.
Gendered socialisation.
Capitalism.
White supremacy & colonialism.
Media & representation.
The list goes on.
So why hasn’t it worked?
Of course, we have at least a couple of answers:
Those with the power and privilege to do something about it, don’t.
And none of these systems were built with survivors in mind.
Maybe there’s something deeper, something more fundamental, standing in the way of real change.
When we ask “How do we change the system?”, we’re already assuming two things:
that the system can be changed from within its own logic, and
that we’re somehow standing outside of it, able to act on it.
But we’re not outside it.
We are part of the system.
It lives in our conditioning.
In our fears.
In our relationships.
In how we participate, comply, or stay silent.
For many survivors, this truth feels painfully familiar.
The very systems that promise safety often cause the harm.
And even after leaving — a relationship, an institution, a culture of silence — the rules of those systems live on in the body.
The silence.
The self-blame.
The weight of trauma.
They shape how we trust.
How we ask for help.
How we believe in our own worth.
So maybe the work is to dismantle the parts of it that live within and between us.
Because the same patterns of domination, control, and erasure don’t survive only through policies.
They survive through what we’ve internalised.
The quiet fears.
The shame.
The belief that our voices don’t matter.
They survive through trauma; through the ways we’ve learned to adapt, appease, and disappear to stay safe.
And when we try to change something externally without addressing the inner architecture that holds it up, we end up replicating the same patterns with new names.
Perhaps real transformation starts in the dismantling that happens both within and beyond us.
In how we relate.
How we lead.
How we choose to show up differently.
Because looking inward doesn’t mean turning away from the world.
It makes our activism more honest.
Our advocacy more humane.
It means ensuring that the systems we rebuild don’t carry the same wounds as the ones we’re trying to dismantle.
Because those were built around control, not compassion.
Compliance, not connection.
And as long as those foundations remain, reform will always fall short.
The task ahead isn’t simply to change the system, but to dismantle the patterns — in our culture, our institutions, and our bodies — that keep it alive.
Because without that, every new structure risks becoming a mirror of the old one. And maybe that’s why, despite our efforts, the same story keeps being told.
Until the silence breaks.
Until the system trembles from the truth it tried to erase.
🦋🙏👌