I wanted to write something intellectual and honest or at least though provoking, but sadly I got the modern plague at a work event a few days back and I.can’t.even. On the thought processing right now. But I don’t want to lose the chain of the fever dream.

So it’s this. If you feel defensive – to a person you don’t know, an unfamiliar situation, a hashtag, an article by someone who is NOT your mirror, pause and pay some fucking attention. Because it’s you.¹ It’s you. It’s your baggage. Your insecurities. Your experience – that is probably privileged by comparison. And try and learn. Keep at it. And even if you can’t understand it, ask yourself how much it actually hurts you to help that person out — to do or say the relatively small thing they are asking you to be an ally for. To reference “people who have uteruses” or “people capable of becoming pregnant” is literally nothing to you no matter who you are. And it means so much to the people who need you to say it and normalize that as the thought and narrative. And maybe, just maybe, if it’s something you do but don’t understand, doing it long enough will help you to get that understanding. And you can be a less privileged, othering, douchey-person. Maybe.

Brought to you by no-filter-covid-me. Be afraid because I’ve given no fucks at work today either.

1 Sidenote – if you’re defensive because someone is abusing you… that’s not what I mean here – so please inject some common sense in the places where my covid fog is preventing me from doing so.