“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
This past two months has been an absolute roller coaster for me. I started a new job, after ten years in the same place. I nearly lost several friends and an entire game group because of a stark disagreement on where the line is between reasonable doubt and overt prejudice. I flew internationally for the very first time. I rank tested in Japan before several important teachers and the president of our school. I experienced a heartbreak that left me feeling utterly numb. I stayed up working until 6 or 7 in the morning on more than one occasion.
The ups and downs have got me over here feeling like Icarus, flying high for the briefest of moments before losing control of everything.
I got to listen to two middle-aged, white, male authors tell me about how Brandon Sanderson is doing better in his book sales than Mary Robinette Kowal because he chose to be extremely unpolitical, and she should have too, but now she’s sleeping in the bed she made. And that if I was smart, I’d do the same thing as Brandon, the white, male, married, straight, American man.
(Congratulations, boys. You’re in a position where you can ride the status quo, without anything adversely affecting you. Go you. Meanwhile I’m still over here watching people like me literally getting murdered with next to no comeuppance for the attackers.)
I had an old friend message me that all of my stances were too negative, and that things would work out for me if I just chose to smile.
(Well-intentioned. I know she was. But hoo boy. That’s a lot to unpack.)
This week I had not one but two grown, adult, should-know-better human men tell me in undisguised words that my life experience is all a lie. That I’m making it all up in a desperate bid for attention. That I have been brainwashed by SJWs to believe I’m a victim, because racism, sexism, and homophobia are just political tricks to gain control over people.
(Fun times.)
I had someone with whom I grew up, and have known for nearly all of my life, tell me literally and not implicitly that disagreeing with his extremely biased article was hate, while his friends tore me apart for what I am and not what I said.
(I can’t help but think of the phrase ‘the blind leading the blind’.)
He told me, with a tone of sincere-but-severely-misguided pain that my choices brought me to where I am, and HEAVILY implied that being gay is somehow a mistake that I chose along the way, and that he hopes I’ll turn away from. If it hadn’t been in written form, I’m sure there’d have been misty eyes and a tremor in the voice.
(Oh hey. Hi there. By the way, if you have reached this, the tenth month of the year 2019 still under the impression that I’m straight, then you REALLY have not been paying attention.)
I’m still unpacking the layers of shame he was implying. The same guy who just preached about how it’s our choices that matter just also told me that being non-straight is horrific, regardless of how I’m acting about it.
Two weeks ago, I got to listen to a speech from the leaders of my church that basically said, “Look, we have a responsibility to love everyone. And that includes LGBT+ people. But also, if you are LGBT+, basically sucks to be you. I really got nothing, here.” And I got to see all the people around me gush about how loving and inclusive it was, all the while even the leaders of my entire religion have no actual hope or encouragement to give me.
A few days ago I got to see the better part of the whole state oppose a ban on conversion therapy, and back up that opposition by talking about how the bill wasn’t written well enough.
(So yes. It’s very comforting to know that people all over the place literally care more about legal minutiae than about protecting vulnerable people from horrific things. Such cozy. Many love.)
And that’s where the quote at the beginning comes in. (The internet says it’s Martin Luther King Jr. but I’m not 100% sure.)
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
When things don’t affect you personally, it’s easy to stand aside. Let some other author use their fame and literal millions of dollars to improve the world. Why bother to change anything, when you’re doing perfectly fine?
When things don’t affect you personally, it’s easy to tell someone to keep their chin up and things will work out.
When things don’t affect you personally, it’s easy to tell someone they’re overreacting. That nothing is really THAT bad. That the 1% slight you feel when something doesn’t go your way is EVERY BIT as hard as the long-standing societized inequality someone else lives every day.
When things don’t affect you personally, it’s easy to call anger hate. It’s easy to call standing up for oneself aggression. It’s easy to claim that change is bad. That having different political priorities is ignorance and stupidity. That someone you don’t agree with is lying, brainwashing scum.
When things don’t affect you personally, you can do and say whatever you want about it without any kind of consequence.
Congratulations. You have privilege.
(No, listen. You literally do.)
But, in the immortal words of every Spider-Man version ever made, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
So are you going to sit around being comfortable, because you can? Or will you do something with your abilities?
How deafening will the sound of your silence be?
