I’m skipping my walk this morning. I know I made it through the entire winter, but now that there appears, whoever meagerly, to be an expectation of spring, I can’t bear the cold driving wintery mix of rain, snow, wind, and disappointment. April, as I believe someone once said, is the cruelest month. Instead, I want to observe something obvious, that everyone already knows, but that still bears beholding all over again. The thing I’m observing is the law of unintended consequences, that disappointing human experience of expecting to do something glorious, but then discovering, often with a crash to the ground, that perhaps you were missing something.
Observe this tweet—really, you have to click and watch it and then come back, even though I’m going to tell you what the person says.
As you can see, it’s of a middle-aged woman, certainly as sad as me, who is reacting to the video of a much younger person—because that’s what we do now, we react and react and react—melting down over being misgendered. The younger person says this, weeping,
I don't understand what is so hard about correcting other people.
while the older lady shakes her head and looks sad, finally cutting off the younger person to say this:
I'm so sorry I fought for gay rights. I'm so sorry for all the pain and suffering I went through. Had I known y'all were going to take it this far… I wish I could go back in time and not fight for gay rights and just live a nice quiet silent life on my own. We thought that's what we were fighting for, was just a nice quiet fitting in, being just like everyone else. But I didn't know y'all were going to take it this far. I mean, I wish I would have never done it.
Let’s just consider what this person is saying. She is “sorry” she “fought for gay rights.” She is “sorry” about the “pain and suffering” she endured. She just wanted “a nice quiet silent life” on her own. She thought she was “fighting” to “fit in” and just be “like everyone else.” But, of course, that wasn’t what she wanted.
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