First, an update :

I still haven’t written that thing I went  on and about in yesterday’s post. I chickened out.  I started thinking about all the heavy social fallout I might have unleashed with it, and how it would hurt everyone I know and care for, and I chickened out.

I still plan on writing it. I have to, the words need to get out. And I still might post it where I planned on posting it. But not before reading everything I can get my hands on about how to do things with total anonymity in this day and age.

I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I wish I could post it under my own name and let the chips fall where they may. And if the only one who could be hurt by it was me, I would go right ahead and do it.

I relish the thought of being a lightning rod for my people. The one who dares to come out of the closet and into people’s faces with the message that we are people too, and the things you believe to be true about us are rank prejudice.

Being the public face of my people would suit me. I have the right skills. I’m highly articulate, very intelligent, a dragon level master at arguing, and I have the right combination of stubbornness and charisma to put my points across in the face of massive opposition from a society that has been fed the message that we are the absolute worst kind of people for decades and does not want to even think about what I will be talking about and thus would have a huge allergic reaction to my message.

To be honest… I think I would really enjoy that role. I suppose that'[s the trickster in me. Like I have said, the trickster’s highest role is to make people think about things they don’t want to think about and thus advance the conversation and bring about change.

Or something like that. I am still working on that definition.

Plus I have a very combative side to my personality that has lain dormant for over twenty years because I realized that other people aren’t there to be my intellectual sparring partners and I should really stop picking verbal fights just to feel the thrill of mind to mind combat.

I will still argue my position sometimes, but when I do so, I am acutely aware of how those with whom I argue are feeling and I am always ready to back off and disconnect if I think people are going to get hurt.

There is a lot of power in this bruised and broken brain of mine, and it’s up to me to make sure that power is used responsibly.

However, were I the public face of an extremely unpopular group of people, I would have lots and lots of opportunities to use my powers for good, so to speak. The whole world would be my sparring partner then, and I would have a nearly infinite challenge ahead of me that would let me truly explore my powers.

And what can I say….. I love to fight. Maybe that means I am crazy. I don’t know.

But I can tell you this : the times when I am passionately arguing my position in the face of massive opposition are the times in my life when I have felt the most truly alive.

It’s like I am an intellectual Klingon.

So if it was just me that could get hurt – and I mean hurt as in assassinated, my views would be that unpopular – I would go’er and never look back.

But it’s not just me that could suffer and that is something I really have to think about.

It makes me wonder how the families of other passionate articulators felt about them. surely they must have, in private at least, wished their loved one had never opened their big fat mouths and that their lives could go back to normal.

Surely some of them even got ostracized big most or all of their family for their views both as a moral reaction to them and as a pragmatic measure for keeping themselves from getting sucked into the social black hole said articulators would be generating.

Public statements of disavowal, disapproval, and distance most likely were made. And I wouldn’t blame people for doing it. They never asked to go on this crazy trip with you.

It makes sense that they would feel the need make that really, really clear.

And yet, these heroes of mine, like Martin Luther and Nelson Mandela, still went through with it. They had the courage to speak up for their group and call the lightning down on their heads because they knew that things had to change.

I don’t have that courage yet. I hope to have it some day, preferably sooner rather than later as I ain’t getting any younger and it will be a very long road to acceptance for my people and their needs.

A road I might not survive. Kinda gotta keep that in mind. I would sure as hell get a fuckton of death threats and threats of grievous personal harm.

You might think I am making too big of a deal of this, but I know what I am talking about. There are lines you just don’t cross because society holds certain things to be sacred and beyond argument, and I would be challenging one of the deepest of said things.

Often these topics are referred to as “third rail” topics because, like the third rail of a subway or light rail service, to touch it would be fatal and once you touched it, you would be locked into it till you die. ^[1]

Well my message would walk right up to one of the biggest of third rails and French kiss it with gusto.

And that’s something I am going to have to think about before I pull the trigger.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Back to Work day!