[ Only fear from seeing Toady himself here twice and undercurrents somehow remain even after he's gone, could force me over my immense nervousness about giving an honest off the cuff "closing argument." Takes a shy, shaking breath before talking to you, faking the confidence at times but enough I hope]
"There was a ... pet shop I went to a bit as a kid. The owner let me play with the kittens, probably hoping I'd get attached and buy one. Anyhow, we'd talk about her animals when it wasn't busy. People bought up these ...really pretty sounding songbirds faster than she could get more. I asked her why she didn't keep more around; she laughed and said,
"They're pretty alone but too many and they all screech."
We don't know how to get along; us or the birds. Everything in society devolves into screeching and needing to be separated: roommates, coworkers, our families, spouses, or other people in general. Eventually, our best answer is to leave, move out, divorce ...or the dreadful last resort: stay there in misery (it loves our company). We spend our lives increasingly alone longing for companionship we constantly distance ourselves from. This doesn't work, the screeching or the leaving....
This is society's biggest problem, causing all it's others. Economically, socially, architecturally it makes sense to share things and all the big reasons we don't are "we can't share things with others cause they'll screw it up." Workplace fridges gets raided, roommates are completely inconsiderate, families even dread to be around each other once a year around holidays, and this is our new normal....
We can't find common ground. Geography lesson, consideration is the only compass to it--consideration of ideas, of others, of ourselves.... Consider ideas--the substance beneath the shitty slogans. Consider others--why they think as they do. Consider yourself--you only have so much time, will you screech it away?
I ...went to Columbus, stayed at a friend's house for the bar exam. She was shocked; her husband never... politely conversed with anyone ... except me. He is a conservative, strict constitutionalist, and my ideological opposite. I never asked him to say he was wrong; there was never any chance of that. I might as well ask him to fly with his arms.... I shyly asked him if he would agree my views were sane. There was a chance he might say yes and thankfully he did. I am invited back and he has kindly lifted his ban on me as a woman in his home. I was afraid his disapproval would prevent me from being friends with his wife; I am very grateful he does not....
To those in the majority here, do you even realize your immense power to drown the rest of us out without even meaning or trying to? Perhaps you yourself don't do this, but others do and it is immensely painful to us. Clients called a female lawyer in my firm "the other secretary," for years; no one did anything.... This may be our only outlet to speak about this freely; its mine.... Even so, that doesn't justify our, the minority, being insensitive to you. How horrid it would be to become worse than what hates us, we know better and don't have that excuse....
We might be able to harmonize a little instead of screech if we can find common ground.... I don't claim to know the way by memory, but I've seen it and I hope to find it again. It's the only place on earth you can't enter alone, but it's worth it.... I promise you that. Thank you...."
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Edit: Thank you Vector, for posting the link on the movement to no longer have transsexualism as a mental disorder. It is still a medical disorder though, as surgery is required to treat it, especially if you want insurance to pay for that surgery, which unfortunately it doesn't currently. I'm not insane.... I just need some treatment....