when talking to a group of transgender women going to lobby congress for the passage of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. Nobody chewed me out.

Also, this is why the "cancel Culture" discussion is really about "safe spaces" "trigger warnings" "harm" and other terms that are meant to identify when a speaker or actor has a malicious intent in their description of differences. Not everyone has a malicious intent and many people carry their prejudices into environments where they may not even be aware of how their language is disrespectful. The problem is that there are so many large groups of people that are socialized in "toxic" environments and there are so many identities that are gaining a platform for expression, that the interaction of cultures on social media is confusing for some people of privilege to understand their place when navigating in oppressed cultures. That viral video of Ta-nehisi Coates explaining why white people saying the word "nigga" is wrong comes to mind.

That's the difference between a resident of West Baltimore saying "west baltimore is rat infested" and Donald Trump saying "west baltimore is rat infested." One of us has an ulterior motive that is malicious in intent, generally to deflect from taking responsibility. If I was to be saying the same thing, there would be issues of class that may cause offense because city dwellers are on guard against bougie people from the county who have alienated them and segregated them economically into these rat infested ghettoes.


America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.