Given what happened in Rwanda 30 years ago, and given that we haven’t seen a repeat since then, I think Kagame is doing a good job. I’m not sure how I feel about him being in power for so long, but I also don’t think we’re in the best place to judge (the West) given how abysmally we failed Rwanda over the past 200 years.

Yep, 100%. People who are concerned about “men being men and women being women” are trans-exclusionary, guaranteed.

Scroll past, then, or educate yourself. Saying that you’re not interested in the topic while also saying that you don’t know what it is… why are you even here? Why are you adding to the political discourse by saying that you don’t want people to engage in political discourse? Good grief.

Even if no charges are laid, someone is dead. The intent to kill wasn’t there, but the impact is that someone is dead. It doesn’t matter if a person didn’t mean to kill someone, but again, someone is dead.

This is why impact matters far more than intent. This is an extreme example, but it still applies in all situations. Someone might want to argue their way out of offending someone else, but the damage has already been done.

Okay.

Neither my nationality (I’m not American) nor my politics (I’m not liberal) have anything to do with this. The fact that I’m disabled means that this is a matter near and dear to my heart, and I can indeed be worried about more than one thing at a time (the eroding of trans rights in my own country, for example). It’s not privileged to want to discuss the impact of language.

It takes people time to change their minds. Hopefully you run across this debate in different contexts. In fact, try bringing it up with friends and/or family to see how they react!

Language changes. We’ve stopped using some expressions because we’ve realized how hurtful they are — the n word, all sorts of slurs related to being LGBTQ2S+, etc. Here’s one more. Doubling down on this is exactly like arguing that you should still be allowed to use the n word because it’s been used as an “expression” for more than half a century.

I just don’t get it. If someone tells me that a word or phrase I’m using is offensive, I’m going to apologize and stop using it. Why is this so hard? Why would people double down on wanting to offend others?

Why is it hard for you to believe? If someone is telling you that the language you’re using is harmful, is your reaction really to say, basically, that you don’t care and you’re going to continue using it?

Sold out online