To the terrified conservatives and libertarians

Joy R Lynskey

7 hrs · Stewartsville, VA · 

*Rolls eyes*
*Lights a cigar because this heart disease cannot kill me fast enough anymore*
*Some of y'all better sit down a minute*

To my friends and family who are terrified of anything different from them.

Look, I get it. When I was about five my mom took me to some sort of big fair. We got there first thing as it opened and one of the first things I spotted was an actual Organ Grinder with a little monkey on a leash. As we began walking towards them, the little monkey started screeching, flailing, running in circles, and then I watched him shit into his own hand and fling it behind us. Both of us turned to watch the trajectory of the poop bomb and it splattered right across the face of a person in a character costume. It was actually a person in a Foghorn Leghorn costume. And now he's got poop on his giant beak.

We were already too close to the monkey to avoid the grinder so we glanced back at him and he simply said. "New monkey, he's never seen a giant rooster before." To which my five year old mind thought, sure yea, it kind of terrifies me too. Empathy to the monkey.

So, I get it. I really do. When you see something you can't understand - brown folks, gay folks, trans folks, geometry, facts - it scares you and you react to that. And thankfully most of you have evolved past the actual shit throwing, but now you just do it with your mouths. Sling shit at people you don't know because you don't care that there's a real person taking your shit to the face.

But even that shit flinging monkey, as soon as Foghorn took his head off, recognized that there was a human being inside that costume that was alien to him. He calmed down instantly. He gained new information that took his sheer terror away. An instant of comprehension, a split second of education, and he was fine.

So I've seen a lot of 'I don't agree with trans people and if you don't like it remove me' posts today. But when I look at you, all I see is that terrified shit slinging monkey. And I remember that you have the sum of human knowledge at your fingertips. And if you wanted to understand anything different from you instead of wallow in the fear and hate, you could. You call people like me snowflakes but you literally believe that your discomfort with something you don't understand should impact the lives of others negatively. Your safe space doesn't have gay, trans, or even brown folks in it. In the 'good old days' you yearn for, you didn't even have to share the potty room with them. Bless y'alls hearts. So uncomfortable with yourselves so you must make every effort to make sure everyone else is too.

So as sad as it is, because a few of you making those statements I have known for almost 40 years, I choose the gay folks, and the trans folks and shades of brown folks I've met along the way along with those few folks I've known equally as long who somehow managed to be human beings while growing up surrounded by a pack of confused, screeching, shit slanging primates. (absolutely no insult to the good primates out there)

I stand with them so you just stay right over there on the wrong side of history all you want.
All I've ever seen any of them do is seek the same life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that y'all are handed on a platter every day just for waking up. And somehow you think your freedom is threatened when those rights are extended to all.

Imagine what we might know 40 more years from now? I mean, us, those who seek new information to gain understanding, not you folks that will still be struggling to compete with the learning capabilities of capuchin monkeys.