A Response to All the Twitter Hate.

Before we start: everything in this post is serious. You're not missing any sarcasm or different meanings. What I am writing is what I mean, and I'm writing it just because I feel the need to somehow respond to the daily pain I see people going through out there in the blogosphere and on social media.

I know people say stupid things like 'I don't see skin colour, I just see the person'. The fact of the matter is that when you first meet someone you take them on face value. When people meet me they think 'ginger'. When I met my sisters boyfriend I thought 'black guy'. The importance for me is not attaching anything extra to those judgements. While a person's skin colour is part of their story it's not all of it and I'm not interested in seeing people only by race, gender identity, sexuality or any other way society can categorise them.

I care about people's stories, but honestly? I don't care who you love, as long as it's fully consensual just go ahead! I don't care whether you're a cis woman or a trans woman (or man), it's none of my business unless you want it to be. I don't care where you're from, just whether you're a good person. I mean, obviously that's not true because I care about people. I read to find out about experiences I'll never have, and I'm interested in understanding people's stories and empathising with their problems. I'm deeply interested in standing up for people when I can use my voice to affect some change or help someone out. What I'm not interested in is stupid people defining 'all black/trans/gay people' because why?

Since the whole Brexit thing here in the UK I've been fuming to the point of throwing inanimate objects whenever anyone uses the phrase 'the British people' to describe people who wanted out of the EU, people who are giant assholes/racists/ignorant twats or basically anyone else who is using the referendum result to say or do anything stupid or offensive. I hate that a tiny majority means that they think they speak for all of us when the reality is they haven't got the first fucking clue what I think. I want to tear myself away from it and shout and shout and shout at them that they don't speak for me, that I don't think what they think, that we couldn't be further apart in what we want for our country. So I think that even the idea that you could possibly be speaking for all of any group is just ridiculous. Before you bad mouth anybody for any decision they've made that hurts nobody and has no effect on you and that's probably been way harder for them to make because they know that far more people will have an opinion about it than say if I, a white, straight cis woman, were to make the same decision, maybe we should all take a step back and try to understand a bit more. About the context of where they're coming from, sure, but also about them as a fellow human being. 

I needed to get this off my chest because it's been stewing for a while. I see people shouting (on twitter, it's almost always twitter) about how sexual harrasment doesn't happen and gay people are 'asking' to be assaulted and my friends having to stand up for their friends again and again for things that are nobody's goddamn business and it makes me mad, so I just wanted to say... I don't know. That I don't understand because I don't have your experience, and I don't know as much as I should know about race issues, gender issues, or LGBTQ+ issues but I'd like to know more, and that to me you are a person first and foremost, and your business is your business.

And that's it.