Talk About It Tuesday - The Fine Line Between Free Speech and Hate

I make the mistake (far too often) of reading the comments posted to Facebook articles from local news stations.  Living in Tennessee, even in Nashville, means that I am a Liberal often surrounded by loud mouth assholes who belittle and make fun of the fact some of us actually do give a damn about those around us.  

During the Pandemic, I've been accused of being afraid of a virus with a 97% chance survival rate (with no thought for the fact that, a) I'm asthmatic and more of a risk, and b) survival doesn't mean same quality of life before you got sick).  I've been called a sheep because I wear a "face diaper".  I've had to read people claiming that scientists and the government are just out to screw us all and make us good little Communists (yeah, they don't know the meaning of the word).  

Through all of the new legislation regarding voting - with the shortening of hours at early voting, the inability to give food or drink to those waiting in a long line to vote, limiting Sunday voting, and the possibility of requiring first time voters to vote in person - I've been told that I just want to let fraud run rampant - regardless of the fact that large scale fraud has yet to be proven.  I've also been called racist because I pointed out that many of the laws that are being put in place are detrimental to people of color because man of these cuts hurt those in the poorer neighborhoods, which have a larger portion (but not all) of people of color.  But because I stated something that is a statistical fact, I'm a racist.

I was ignored whenever I tried to show, with links to scientific journals, that sex is more a spectrum than an either/or.  (There are so many differing XY chromosomal combinations that He/She isn't the only option out there.)  I was asked told that, if I had a daughter instead of sons, I would be afraid to let a man into the restroom with them.  No matter that transgendered people have been using the bathrooms of their preferred gender rather than their birth sex forever and most, if not all, of the times there has been violence against a woman in a restroom, it hasn't been someone transgendered but a man, as a man, coming in and doing whatever the hell he pleases.  I've been told by people that it's "easy" to tell a boy from a girl - when almost every time Tedd and I go somewhere, he is mistaken for a girl because of his long hair and lack of facial hair.  

These people have a right to say what they want.  And in some cases, I can agree to disagree.  When it comes to whether we should focus on Capitalism All The Time or Democratic Socialist Policies for All, I can see differences of opinions and live and let live.  I personally think we should care for those who aren't as fortunate as others, because one day, anyone could find themselves in a position of needing help.  But I can see where their priorities are different.  But when they are trying to deny rights to someone because their outer gender doesn't fit their inner gender (their actual brain structures fit with the gender they feel they are) or to disallow the ability to adopt because of who they love,  or when they are convinced that the only reason that black men are being killed by the cops (and sometimes common citizens) is because they didn't "comply", regardless of any proof to the contrary, I can't find common ground.  I can't see it as a difference in opinion.  I see it as a denial of facts, of a refusal to see the world as it is and trying to change it, but seeing it as only their small portion of the world exists.  If they don't experience it, then it must not be real.   And it makes me so angry because they are so very short sighted.  They refuse to believe that they have any kind of unconscious bias for how someone else may be treated.  

They have the ability to say what they want.  I get that.  But where does their ability to be assholish jerks end, and the rights of others to not live in a world that is hostile to who they are begin?  And if we go to far, will they then have a legitimate cause for being discriminated against?  I don't know.  The world is too messy to know.  But I wish we could figure it out because instead of drawing together, we seem to be pulling further apart.