Melanie Pond retweetet
This is an apple.
And yet, for reasons no one can properly justify, some people insist on sometimes calling it a banana.
Pointing that out—simply asking you to call it what it is—is not “compelled speech.”
It isn’t authoritarian, totalitarian, extreme, Ultra or part of some supposed purity spiral. Stop being absolutely fucking ridiculous.
It’s a basic expectation that words should mean something, and that we should be able to describe reality as it is, not as we’d prefer it to be.
Because once you abandon that once an apple can be a banana depending on how someone feels or what’s socially convenient then language stops functioning properly.
Communication breaks down. Truth becomes negotiable. And at that point, you’re not being kind or progressive or morally superior you’re just participating in confusion and expecting everyone else to go along with it.
And let’s be honest about the level of drama here. No one is trying to criminalise you or throw you in prison for getting it wrong. Well yes the pro trans lot are, which you know and that makes your hyperbolic gaslighting even more ridiculous & insulting.
No one is asking for some huge personal sacrifice. What’s being asked is incredibly small: use accurate language.
That’s it. Stop acting as though this is some grand moral persecution or an attack on your freedom.
If being asked to call an apple an apple feels like an unbearable imposition, then the reaction itself is worth examining. Because the request isn’t extreme, the response to it is.
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