I hate it when i see someone asking ‘so wait, if a trans woman like women, is she gay or straight?’ and suddenly a dozen people jump on their ass for being ignorant or transphobic or whatnot- when all they had to do was answer the question. All you had to is go ‘She’s gay!’, and the person would go ‘oh, cool!’ and now they know. They just had a positive interaction with trans folks.
But if you belittle them, now they’ve learned they’re punished for asking. They’re punished for wanting to know, for wanting to learn, and for coming directly to the people who live that life instead of just going to google. And they come away not having learned anything except that those people were dicks to them.
Everyone is clueless at some point. When I was 10, I was homophobic. I was a kid, raised around homophobic parents in a homophobic country. But one day i decided hey, i want to learn, and i found some gay friends and I asked them some questions.
Do you think i’d be here; if they had told me that i was an ignorant fuck, that i should pull my head out of my ass, that I shouldn’t have asked those things?
It was thanks to them that I learned and grew as a person, because even though i was a stupid homophobic kid with some admittedly stupid questions, they answered them, because everybody starts clueless.
It doesnt matter how young or old or who they are either- everyone starts somewhere. And lord knows, I’ve had some people ask me some stupid questions. My government teacher came to me yesterday and asked me that exact question i mentioned above, and I answered it. He’s a 40-something year old dude. He’s trying to learn.
My little brother is 9, and asked me once if being gay meant that I wanted to kiss every girl i met. Was it a stupid question by my standards? yes. Did I answer it like it was any other normal question? Also yes.
Insulting people who are trying to learn is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever encountered. It can literally mean the difference between someone becoming part of the community or trying to take us down. We judge that; we control how we educate.
Do yourself a favor and educate. Everyone starts somewhere, and it’s our job to help them along, not tear them down.
as some one who commonly has coworkers and people who know me the line “can i as you something without you getting mad?”. yes this is important cause the question is always and hard one for them to ask that they want the answer too.
please jest answer questions cause being an ass to people who don’t know will jest hurt all of us in the end.
And when people say “just go to google” that’s not always helpful and sometimes they have and gotten conflicting answers or aren’t sure if they can trust what they found. Once, when I was a kid, I was looking for information about heroin, and I came across a site that basically said heroin is good for you and adults and the CIA only say it is bad so that t they can keep it all for themselves. Now luckily I was intelligent, capable of critical thinking, and this wasnt anywhere near the first or only site I read through, but I think about what would happen if it was on one of the first pages that popped up on google, or one of the only pages someone read.
Sometimes people have a suspicion, but they need to hear someone confirm it. My students are like that all the time. “So do we use ‘word’ here?” “Do we use this conjugation or this one?” “Is this right?” They just want to make sure they are doing what’s right and that what they are thinking is what is correct. Now that being said, I’m starting to be even more Socratic with them to help them develop the skill to answer those questions on their own and build their abilities to think for themselves and use references, but everyone starts somewhere.
emotionally I’m in crisis bc I don’t know which one I believe is more truthful… this is like coming across the two-faced god who asks you which face is lying..
Big Gay Dracula Does a Shitpost 