I Am Going to Say Something Controversial
There's more and more of a divide growing between people who want to shine a light on how bad racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination still are in this country, and take strong, decisive action to do something about it even if they have to be loud and step on people's toes in order to do it, and on the other side, people who think that the first set of people take it way, way too far in a way that polarizes the issue and just makes everything worse for everyone.
I recently had several long, very involved arguments with people who weren't on the same side of that divide as I was, and I tried doing something I hadn't done before - I listened. I didn't just mindlessly let go of my integrity and let their point of view override mine, but I gave the other side a chance to lay out their argument and try to convince me that it made sense.
What surprised me was that once I stopped needing to be right and actually listened to their point of view, I realized that it DID make sense. Yes, there are a handful of idiot bigots on one side, and a handful of fanatical loons on the other side - that's par for the course with this kind of thing - but by and large, BOTH sides of the argument make a hell of a lot of sense. Both ways of approaching the issue were destructive in some ways, and both ways were helpful and transformative in some ways. And not just helpful in token ways, but helpful in real, meaningful ways.
And no, I'm not going to say which side of the debate I subscribe to, though if you care for whatever reason, it's not hard to find it in my comment activity. I wrote a story about it a while back, but I'm going to delete it once I publish this one, because I don't see things the same way anymore.
So yeah, that's my controversial point of view - one that I doubt many people on either side of the issue will agree with.
I recently had several long, very involved arguments with people who weren't on the same side of that divide as I was, and I tried doing something I hadn't done before - I listened. I didn't just mindlessly let go of my integrity and let their point of view override mine, but I gave the other side a chance to lay out their argument and try to convince me that it made sense.
What surprised me was that once I stopped needing to be right and actually listened to their point of view, I realized that it DID make sense. Yes, there are a handful of idiot bigots on one side, and a handful of fanatical loons on the other side - that's par for the course with this kind of thing - but by and large, BOTH sides of the argument make a hell of a lot of sense. Both ways of approaching the issue were destructive in some ways, and both ways were helpful and transformative in some ways. And not just helpful in token ways, but helpful in real, meaningful ways.
And no, I'm not going to say which side of the debate I subscribe to, though if you care for whatever reason, it's not hard to find it in my comment activity. I wrote a story about it a while back, but I'm going to delete it once I publish this one, because I don't see things the same way anymore.
So yeah, that's my controversial point of view - one that I doubt many people on either side of the issue will agree with.
36-40, M
