I say a lot of things I have no right to say.  I’ve been known to com­ment on race (from a white per­spec­tive), nation­al­ism (from a US-native per­spec­tive), phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty (from an able-bod­ied per­spec­tive), gen­der iden­ti­ty (from a cis male per­spec­tive), reli­gion (from a main­line-Chris­t­ian-turned-Uni­tar­i­an-Uni­ver­sal­ist per­spec­tive), and socioe­co­nom­ics (from an upper-mid­dle-class per­spec­tive).  And, occa­sion­al­ly, I do it right here in the (ahem) “pri­va­cy” of my own web­site, where any­one in the world can read it, even if they’ve nev­er met me before and have no idea what a delight­ful­ly quirky and fab­u­lous­ly nuanced human being I am.* Why? Because, while I believe con­ver­sa­tions about “isms” are cru­cial in the world right now, the white, US-native, able-bod­ied, cis male, main­line-Chris­t­ian-turned-Uni­tar­i­an-Uni­ver­sal­ist, upper-mid­dle-class per­spec­tive is the only per­spec­tive I have.  I sim­ply can’t speak from the per­spec­tive of a black per­son, or of a woman, or of an immi­grant, no mat­ter how many (trig­ger warn­ing) “friends” I have in any of those groups.  And that makes me both pro­found­ly sad, and pro­found­ly grate­ful. It’s upset­ting to rec­og­nize the pain, frus­tra­tion, and anger in those who write lists of “8 Things Trans­gen­der Peo­ple Do Not Owe You.”  Or “10 Things You Should­n’t Say to Some­one Who Uses a Wheel­chair.”  Or “10 Not-Racist-at-All Things White Peo­ple Do That Make Me Think ‘Yup, He’s Prob­a­bly Racist’.”   And this won­der­ful Every­day Fem­i­nism arti­cle—in which Jen­nifer Loubriel (a Woman of Col­or) gen­tly, firm­ly, and very effec­tive­ly sup­ports a “no white tears” rule for cross-cul­tur­al conversations—was a dif­fi­cult, dif­fi­cult read.  The very act of seek­ing to empathize with a fel­low human being, when done from a place of priv­i­lege, can be hurt­ful.  There’s no one for whom that does­n’t suck. So with all that pain, with all those seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able obsta­cles between souls, where can I find cause for “pro­found grat­i­tude”? I’m pro­found­ly grate­ful because the nar­row­ness of my own per­spec­tive reminds me that only through con­nect­ed­ness can we approach per­fec­tion.  And I’m grate­ful too that we can only approach per­fec­tion: omni­science does not exist in the human ani­mal, so we sim­ply have to rely on one anoth­er to share wis­dom, expe­ri­ence, and insight.  Our lim­it­ed­ness makes it essen­tial that we nur­ture com­mu­ni­ty, for the sake of our very sur­vival. Two videos showed up prov­i­den­tial­ly on my per­son­al Face­book feed with­in hours this past week.  The first was Julie Bindel’s opin­ion piece in The Guardian, remind­ing us that cen­sor­ship, while it can be a tempt­ing response to opin­ions we find upset­ting, is gen­er­al­ly coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.  (“Polit­i­cal move­ments such as civ­il rights and fem­i­nism,” she reminds us, “have made such progress because we were able to hold peo­ple to account.”)  I know that some of my most cher­ished growth moments have come after my demon­strat­ed igno­rance, thought­less­ness, or naïveté were named and cor­rect­ed, rather than sim­ply being silenced. The sec­ond video was this delight­ful out-com­ing by 24-year-old Aus­tralian train dri­ver (and trans­man) Hen­ry Tade­bois, who requests that his friends and fam­i­ly begin to use his new name and appro­pri­ate pro­nouns, but assures them that “Don’t wor­ry, I won’t get offend­ed” if they slip up, before invit­ing them to “ask me any ques­tions you might have.”  (And while this is indeed won­der­ful­ly gen­er­ous of Hen­ry, I will reit­er­ate here the caveat I shared when I first re-post­ed the video on Face­book: Com­ing out def­i­nite­ly ≠ invit­ing your ques­tions about stuff that does­n’t affect you. The rev­e­la­tion and the invi­ta­tion are two dif­fer­ent things.) These two videos—the one, a warn­ing against cen­sor­ship; the oth­er, an invi­ta­tion to awk­ward curiosity—are oppo­site sides of the same coin, I think.  They both point to a truth that’s as fun­da­men­tal to human­i­ty as it is ter­ri­fy­ing: No gen­uine com­mu­ni­ty can exist unless we express and demon­strate a will­ing­ness to be offend­ed. That’s why wed­ding vows don’t spec­i­fy that two peo­ple are joined “until one of them real­ly cross­es a line.”  It’s why my home con­gre­ga­tion’s Covenant of Right Rela­tions names very explic­it­ly the fact that we expect to dis­agree with one anoth­er, but that we com­mit to “stay­ing at the table” in spite of those dis­agree­ments.  And it’s why, when­ev­er I come out to a new per­son or group of peo­ple, I always invite the audi­ence to ask what­ev­er ques­tions come to mind. I’m a white, US-native, able-bod­ied, main­line-Chris­t­ian-turned-Uni­tar­i­an-Uni­ver­sal­ist, upper-mid­dle-class cis male.  The “gay card” is real­ly the only strike against me in the Priv­i­lege lot­tery, so I’m all but immune to oppres­sion and big­otry.  Not every­one can stand in this place of safe­ty and speak as bold­ly as I do.  But if there’s some­thing you won­der, or some­thing you’re curi­ous about, or some­thing you feel a need to say, please say it.  If it’s none of your busi­ness, I may tell you so.  But more like­ly, I’ll answer you as forth­right­ly as I’m able.  That’s the best way for both of us to grow.

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*And mod­est. I’m also very mod­est. Be sure you men­tion to peo­ple how mod­est I am when you tell them about this blog.