The ultimate test of your own understanding is to be able to explain a concept to children. Circle Time is educational television for a new age, teaching kids (and us all) about the complicated social machinery of our technocapitalist world.

To undo structural inequality, you’ve got to start small. Like literally small. Like with children. On this episode of Circle Time, Christen Clifford tackles the expansive and intersectional nature of gendered oppression, or, as she puts it, being mean—for a really, really, really long time. Distilling thinkers like bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw down for the picture book set, Clifford reminds us all of the fundamental feminist work that’s still be to done.