And my point is, what do you mean by that? What are these other methods that will take us the rest of the way? Talking and education is what actually gets results. They're the final stages. Calling out racism is talking. Protesting is education. What else is there? violence? Revolution? That's being tried in many places in the world right now. And has been tried many times before. It doesn't ever lead anywhere good for anybody.

I know very well what happened to Emmett Till and what his mother did. I even wrote about it recently. That was education too! Emmett Till's mother inspired Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks (and Mamie Till, obviously) inspired a new wave of attention for the civil rights movement. And that led to...you guessed it...more and better conversation. Obviously I'm not saying that all speech needs to take place politely in a quiet room over coffee and cakes.

And yes, people always hold social capital over, at least the vast majority of, their critics. That's not news. It's why they're well known enough to be criticised. I'm not objecting to criticism. I'm objecting to the repeated attempts to frame hatred and hysteria as "criticism". If people were being honest and saying"

"Chappelle's special hurt my feelings because I deal with gender dysphria and don't like it when people highlight that my body doesn't match my internal identity."

I think 99.9% of people would be understanding and respectful and receptive to that. The answer might still be "okay, well I guess it's best you don't watch it then," in the same way that, for example, the best solution for somebody who doesn't want to hear jokes about slavery or hear the n-word 1000 times, might be to not watch it. But very few people, least of all me, would push back against that kind of criticism. But instead it's:

"Dave Chappelle is a transphobe and his jokes are going to lead to the deaths of trans people and anybody who liked the special wants us dead. It should be removed from Netflix and anybody who disagrees is a bigot."

This kind of "discourse" has become the default for so many people, and as I said, it undermines the entire cause for countless people who would otherwise be supportive. Most people are too smart for obvious emotional blackmail and manipulation to be an effective strategy.

And the "kill the gays" quote, going purely off what you've written here (as I said, Im not familiar), is a perfect example of the limits of the binary thinking so often seen in modern discourse. The quote you've wriitten here does sound empathetic. I don't care if it was written by Pol Pot or Katy Perry or the Dalai Lama. We have to get past the idea that if we disagre with somebody on certain issues, everything else they ever said becomes evil and wrong.

If the person who said this has been waging a war against the LGBT community then I disagree in the strongest possible terms with his actions. But I still agree with that particular quote. Both of these things can be true simultaneously. The words are true. Even if he said them disingenuously or as cover for his evil bullshit elsewhere. Similarly, if you take issue with the people excusing the murder of trans people, that's great. I do too! But then talk about that. Don't try and loop in a comedy special just because both of them relate to trans people.

You're absolutely right. A vocal minority does not equal a vocal majority. But when the "vocal" majority is not only not vocal, but completely silent about the mistakes that minority is making, you can't be surprised if the people looking in from the outside struggle to tell them apart. That's not disingenuous. It's a failure of the community to speak clearly and honestly.