Reply #50: It's a lot like what my mom says about getting old...

[Sapphocrat]

What's the alternative?

I know that for the rest of my life, I'm going to be in a minority, and I'm going to be hated and debased, sometimes directly (which I prefer), but most times subtly, insiduously, passive-agreesively (which I deplore). There's nothing I can do to change that. Ever.

All I can do is point out the hate and hypocrisy where I see it, and refuse to curl up and die -- which is just what a lot of people would want me to do: Shut up, go away, kill myself.

I won't do that. I won't shut up, I won't go away, and I won't kill myself.

Maybe one in 50 times, what I say or write changes a mind, or at least makes someone stop to consider that they don't know everything in the whole damned world, and they certainly don't know a thing about my world, unless they've lived in it.

The rest of the time? If I can't reach someone through reason, or by taking the risk of opening myself up to let them see how much damage their indifference has done, at least I won't give them the satisfaction of silencing me. I will, as one contemporary author put it, stick like a pufferfish in their throats.

That's not the liberal attitude, nor the pacifistic attitude, on which I pride myself. But we're all human, and we all have a breaking point. And sometimes the only satisfaction you can get is being a pufferfish. If nothing else, you die knowing you did your best.

Sometimes you do lose your mind. Sometimes you really, really want to just open a vein and be done with it. But that's exactly what they wish you would do.

So you keep fighting.

And, Skittles, I've been meaning to say this for a long time, and since you've given me the perfect opening:

THANK YOU. I've seen you, heard you, noticed you, repeatedly, for a very long time, and I can't begin to describe my admiration for your sense of justice, and your unquestioning willingness to go to the mat for the underdog. You don't have to do it, but you do, just because it's the right thing. And you do it forcefully and fearlessly.

Nor can I describe the swell of gratitude I feel for people like you in the world.

Don't ever let them intimidate you. I know I speak for more than myself when I say you don't even know how much you are appreciated. It's just that some of us, like me, keep missing the opportunity to tell you that.