It's like breaking camouflage: once you know how it works and how to spot it, then it's easy. But before that it can be confusing.

When I started studying this stuff, it was still called "Women's Studies," and we spent some time discussing how oppression is like the bars of a cage. Each individual obstacle doesn't seem like much -- people should be able to go around it -- but it connects to other obstacles and forms a very practical barrier to what people can accomplish. So you learn to look for those connections. You think, "How would someone get around this?" and trace that bar to where it links to other bars, blocking progress.

And then you look for weak spots, and a crowbar...