Naming things really makes a difference. I thought about microaggressions all the time before I had a name for the phenomenon. Once I did, once they could be reliably tagged, they also felt like something that could be dealt with effectively. “Mansplaining.” “Rape culture.” All of those terms help clarify the intention of an act or a situation, and that’s the kind of explaining I can get behind. But refusing to name a thing carries its own form of power.
