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Change Is Rarely Given

We like to imagine that progress arrives with consensus. It almost never does.

Every profession tells stories of progress as though it unfolded neatly, propelled by consensus and goodwill. We forget that every gain we now take for granted was once an inconvenience to someone in power. Change is rarely given.

It is almost always taken — through persistence, disruption, and courage that made others profoundly uncomfortable.

When Waiting Wasn’t An Option

Ed Roberts contracted polio at the age of fourteen and was left quadriplegic, dependent on a 350-kilogram iron lung to breathe. Refusing to let his disability define his limits, he completed school via telephone interviews and set his sights on studying political science at the University of California, Berkeley. When the university learned of his reliance on a ventilator, it attempted to rescind his admission.

Roberts fought back, was admitted, and discovered that the campus itself was almost entirely inaccessible - no ramps or curb cuts for wheelchair users. His friends took to the streets at night, chiselling out cuts in the curbs and pouring concrete by hand. This act of guerilla accessibility by his friends allowed Ed to move between buildings.

Those home-made curb cuts became prototypes for universal access, and one of the most recognised accessibility features in the world. Today, every pram, wheelchair, trolley, and mobility aid makes use of them.

Ed and his friends were breaking the law. They were also changing it. That act of defiance was practical and symbolic: a literal reshaping of public space so disabled people could move through the world.

The act only became political because of the inertia of others.

When the Steps to Power Were Too Steep

Two decades later, another act of defiance would transform disability rights forever.

In March 1990, more than sixty disabled people abandoned their wheelchairs and mobility devices at the bottom of the steps to the Capitol building. They began crawling up the marble steps toward the doors of Congress. Among them was an eight-year-old girl, Jennifer Keelan, who pulled herself up the steps, one by one. She declared: “I’ll take all night if I have to.”

The “Capitol Crawl” became a turning point. Five months later, the Americans with Disabilities Act passed into law.

Legislators later admitted that the protest and the sight of citizens forced to crawl toward their government — had made inaction impossible.

These protests weren’t polite appeals. They were acts that forced the public to see what they preferred to look away from — acts that made others uncomfortable. Yet without that discomfort, there would have been no law, no ramps, no recognition of access as a right rather than a favour.

Change didn’t come because the system was enlightened. It came because it was cornered by truth.

Truth that had to be spoken by an eight year-old girl.

When Silence Became Unbearable

Before disability activists carved curb cuts, others had carved space in even riskier circumstances.

In 1969, police raided a small gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village — the Stonewall Inn. Raids were routine then, part of an unspoken social contract that said: you can exist, but only quietly.

That night, something shifted. People who had spent their lives being asked to make themselves small — drag queens, trans women, young homeless queer people — refused to go quietly. They fought back.

The Stonewall riots were chaotic, emotional, and deeply human.

They weren’t orchestrated by politicians or strategists; they were born of exhaustion and a community pushed past its limit.

What followed wasn’t immediate acceptance, but it was unstoppable momentum. Pride parades, advocacy groups, and the modern LGBTQIA+ rights movement all trace their roots to that eruption of collective truth.

Stonewall wasn’t political in its origin. It became political because silence had become unsustainable.

Australia had it’s own version of Stonewall. In June 1978, a small group of activists — inspired by international pride movements and determined to protest Australia’s criminalisation and mistreatment of queer people — organised a nighttime march along Oxford Street. What began as a celebration of liberation turned violent when police attacked participants, arresting 53 people and publishing their names in newspapers, effectively outing many and costing them jobs, housing, and safety. Many were violently beaten in jail cells.

The courage of the 78ers transformed national consciousness: it ignited ongoing activism, built solidarity across movements, and eventually gave rise to the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras — now one of the world’s largest pride events.

In the collective consciousness though, the 78ers are not remembered. Many conservatives focus only on the Mardi Gras celebrations as if it was that light and easy. This selective remembrance allows institutions and commentators — particularly conservative ones — to embrace the spectacle of inclusion without confronting the struggle that made it possible.

When Decency Alone isn’t Enough

It’s tempting to believe that if a cause is good enough, it will naturally gain support. That people, once made aware, will simply do the right thing.

History suggests otherwise.

Every major civil rights shift began as an act of perceived defiance.

The civil rights sit-ins of the 1960s weren’t polite requests; they were strategic interruptions.

The women’s suffrage marches were mocked, vilified, and criminalised.

Marriage equality was dismissed as “too divisive” until suddenly it was obvious.

The pattern is depressingly consistent: Before change becomes common sense, it is called chaos. Before it becomes policy, it is called politics. Before it becomes law, it is called trouble.

And yet, without the troublemakers, the laws never move.

The Cost of Waiting for Comfort

What unites all these movements — from Stonewall to Berkeley to the Capitol steps — is not radicalism for its own sake. It’s the recognition that waiting for comfort is a trap. Those who benefit from the status quo rarely feel urgency to alter it.

So when marginalised people act, their very existence becomes political — not because they sought politics, but because others made equality conditional on patience.

Change only looks confrontational from the perspective of comfort.

Inconvenience as a Catalyst

To call advocacy “inconvenient” is to miss its point.

The curb-cutters, the Capitol Crawlers, the protestors at Stonewall — they weren’t trying to make life uncomfortable for others. They were trying to make life possible for themselves.

Discomfort was simply the byproduct of their courage.

When leaders say, “We support change, but not this way,” what they often mean is, “We support change that doesn’t require us to change.”

There is no such thing.

The act of making systems fairer will always feel like friction to those who’ve never felt the edges.

For Leaders: How to Hold the Heat

Leaders often talk about wanting innovation, courage, and vision. But those qualities rarely look calm when they arrive. If you lead in times of change — or claim to — your job isn’t to avoid discomfort; it’s to absorb it constructively.

That means:

• Listening when people name inequity, even if it implicates you.

• Defending the right to dissent within your teams.

• Recognising that advocacy isn’t aggression — it’s unpaid labour the system depends on.

• Remembering that being “called in” or “called out” is a sign of trust — that someone still believes the system can improve.

Leadership in moments of reform isn’t about controlling the tone. It’s about keeping the conversation alive long enough for the truth to take root.

Why Inclusion Movements Keep Succeeding

Every act of resistance eventually becomes an act of redesign. Curb cuts became public infrastructure. The ADA became global precedent. Stonewall became Pride. Civil disobedience became civil rights.

The cycle always looks the same: defiance → discomfort → denial → dialogue → design.

And then, years later, we look back and call it progress. The struggle is sanitised.

Every Profession has its Curb Cuts and its Stonewalls

Veterinary medicine likes to see itself as compassionate and community-minded. But compassion is not the same as justice.

The profession has its own versions of the curb cuts, Capitol Crawl, and Stonewall moments — times when individuals had to push through inertia or exclusion so deeply ingrained that their very existence became a form of protest.

Here are several professional “change-was-not-given” moments in veterinary medicine that parallel those broader civil-rights examples — each illustrating how progress often came only after discomfort, disruption, or defiance. Many were people who had to push — often alone — to make belonging possible. Every one of these advances came at a social cost to those who pushed for it. But each left the profession fairer than before.

Britain and Ireland’s First Female Veterinarian

In 1894, Aleen Isabel Cust enrolled at the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh under a pseudonym because women were barred from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) exams. She graduated with distinction, but the RCVS refused her application in 1897, citing “long usage and all precedent.”

They did not question her competence — only her eligibility.

She practised unofficially in Ireland for two decades, serving as a Veterinary Inspector and on the Western Front during WWI. Only after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 did the RCVS grant her recognition.

On 21 December 1922 — twenty-five years after completing her training — Aleen Cust became Britain and Ireland’s first registered female veterinarian.

The words used to justify her exclusion — “public confidence” “fitness,” “unsuitability for fieldwork” — are nearly identical to the language that still governs health disclosure today.

The veterinary profession eventually apologised to Aleen Cust — but only after her death.

Her story isn’t a relic; it’s a mirror. Every woman in veterinary medicine today stands on the concrete she poured without permission.

It’s worth learning about the Edinburgh Seven - who years before Cust was a pioneer in veterinary medicine - became the first female students ever to be admitted to a British university in 1869. They faced relentless hostility from male students and faculty, were denied access to lectures and exams, and even endured violent mobs — most infamously during the “Surgeons’ Hall Riot” of 1870, when a crowd jeered and threw mud as they arrived to sit an anatomy exam. It wasn’t until 2019 that the University of Edinburgh posthumously awarded them their medical degrees.

South Africa’s First Black Veterinarian

Dr Jotello Festiri Soga also studied at Edinburgh - and returned to his birth country of South Africa to work as a government vet in a colonial system that barely acknowledged his legitimacy. Despite professional excellence, his work was minimised and his name largely erased from veterinary histories for nearly a century.

His success directly challenged racist hierarchies within the colonial service, which rarely acknowledged African professionals. The University of Pretoria eventually named its veterinary library after him — a symbolic act of correction and recognition.

Soga’s erasure — and later reclamation — mirrors how institutions resist, then retroactively sanitise, the change they once opposed.

The “Women of the Second Wave” — The Gender Transformation of the Profession

In most countries, women were fewer than 10% of veterinarians until the 1970s. As women entered in large numbers, they were told the profession would “decline in quality” or “lose its strength.” The pushback was framed as - women entering vet schools were taking spots from men. Even as they excelled, systemic sexism persisted — from pay gaps to “part-time stigma.”

The demographics flipped, not because systems welcomed women, but because they kept showing up anyway. Today’s normalised gender balance was once treated as an existential threat. The discomfort of inclusion preceded its inevitability.

Deaf and Disabled Veterinarians — Ongoing Change

Vets with hearing loss, disability, chronic illness, or neurodivergence have had to fight for basic access — captioning, ergonomic accommodations, and flexible scheduling — often at personal cost.

Like Ed Roberts’ curb cuts, these are not demands for special treatment; they are acts of design correction. This current frontier shows inclusion is still uneven, but disclosure safety and psychosocial risk reforms are reframing accessibility as legal and ethical infrastructure, not benevolence.

LGBTQIA+ Visibility in Veterinary Medicine

For decades, LGBTQIA+ vets and students were told to remain discreet or risk career damage. Early queer veterinarians often formed invisible networks of support. The shift began when groups like Australian Rainbow Vets and Allies, Pride VMC and BVLGBT+ emerged, explicitly linking identity, belonging, and professional safety.

Each of these moments forced veterinary medicine to confront what it had normalised. Visibility has since reshaped recruitment, wellbeing, and leadership conversations. Theirs is the echo of Stonewall: Pride in vet med didn’t begin as celebration — it began as survival. None began as political movements. They became political only because of the inertia of others.

And many of today’s early-career vets are quietly challenging the economic and structural inequities that make belonging conditional on overwork.

The Cost of Waiting for Comfort

Those who hold power rarely feel urgency to change.

When the excluded speak, their tone is scrutinised more than their message. They are told to be patient, professional, or “constructive.”

But the history of every liberation — civic or professional — suggests that comfort is the last stage of reform, not the first.

Before inclusion feels graceful, it feels disruptive.

Before it feels obvious, it feels offensive.

Discomfort is not a symptom of failure; it’s the sound of something moving.

What This Means for Veterinary Leaders Today

If we are serious about inclusion, we must stop expecting it to arrive through harmony.

Reform will come through persistence, agitation, and truth-telling that pricks our sense of professional pride. When veterinary workplaces bristle at conversations about disability, chronic illness, or identity, that discomfort is not a sign of failure. It’s evidence that the ground is shifting — that the unexamined norms of who belongs, who leads, and whose needs are “reasonable” are finally being examined.

Leadership in such times isn’t about calming the noise — it’s about translating it into design.

That means:

• Hearing discomfort as data, not disrespect.

• Recognising advocacy as unpaid labour that keeps the profession honest.

• Acknowledging that those who “push too hard” are usually compensating for those who didn’t push at all.

The Push Is the Point

Progress rarely feels polite while it’s happening.

Those who demand inclusion are often accused of being divisive, angry, or impatient. Yet history shows that their persistence is what allows everyone else to look back later and say, “Of course that was the right thing to do.”

We stand on the shoulders of people who built their own ramps — literally and metaphorically. The least we can do is build better systems so the next generation doesn’t have to pour their own concrete.

The Cost of Speaking Up

I work alongside wonderful people who also speak up — and who, like those before them, bear the cost of doing so.

They are the ones who name inequity when it’s easier to look away, who ask uncomfortable questions in meetings, who keep showing up even when they’re labelled abrasive, political, or too much.

Some love them for it. Others try to silence them with civility.

But without them, nothing moves.

Their courage rarely fits the narrative of collegial harmony our profession prefers. Yet it is precisely because of their persistence that conversations about accessibility, chronic illness, neurodiversity, psychological safety, and structural reform even exist.

We owe our evolving profession to the people who risk being misunderstood to make it better.

The Invitation

If you feel the urge to label someone as divisive, pause. Ask what system their question is exposing. Ask what cost they’re paying to raise it.

Because progress doesn’t come from the centre — it comes from the margins. From people willing to make the room a little less comfortable so everyone can finally fit inside.