But maybe you see that it’s not [different] people who are the sick ones who have a problem. We are the sick ones who torment [different] people every day of their lives. The problem wasn’t inside Leelah Alcorn any more than, to reference Chris Rock, the problem with racism is in black communities or the problem with the Turner marriage was in Tina…
…They’re not the ones who need a message sent to them. They don’t need to hear the debate over how bad [the situation is]. They are already infinitely more qualified to have that debate than we are. They already know how bad it is.
We, on the other hand, are the ones who are making it bad, and the ones with the power to change that. We are the ones the message needs to be sent to.
The above is from an article on the tragic death of Leelah Alcorn. I adapted it to a broader perspective because it resonated with me, and I think it’s a very powerful message that crosses over to all kinds of intolerant behavior and judgmental attitudes.
And it addresses the smug self-justification of those behaviors and attitudes — the ones that are so sick, so screwed-up, by religion or by a lifetime of narcissistic training, that they cause people to get so discouraged and depressed that they kill themselves.
Or, if they have the option — and the smarts and the guts — they may instead choose to cut out of their lives all the judgmental, intolerant, bullshit people who treat them like so much garbage, and the other ones who stand idly by and let them do it.
There’s one more quote from the story that applies to those who think that they know better, that they have more of a right to speak than another has to be heard. Those who refuse to admit that they could have had any part in creating the problems. Those who just HAVE to be right, at the expense of another person’s right to their own life, or their own family.
Well, they can take their “ethics,” and they can go fuck themselves.