I’m going to guess that if you’re straight and white and reading this, you don’t really know what it’s like for someone to want you dead. Maybe I’m wrong, and I have such a marvelously-varied coterie of friends that perhaps more than a few of you have. I’m not talking about an ex or a sworn enemy. I’m not talking about the person who cut you off for the second time in a week or the one who keeps getting your Starbucks order wrong. I’m talking about some stranger who simply wants you to cease to exist because they hate what they think you are – whether because of race or skin color or religion or gender or sexuality.
This isn’t about the general idea of being disliked or discriminated against. It’s not about the relative with whom you share a mutual and constant dislike – maybe even hate. In all those instances, I doubt those people ever genuinely wanted you to die.
There’s something different about that. And there’s something different about having such sentiments directed unequivocally at you. It’s one thing to read about it, or to try to put yourself in the shoes of some character of some historical scene, it’s quite another to actually be on the receiving end of a death wish.
I’ve gotten a disturbing cache of Twitter and Facebook messages that literally wish death upon me just for being gay. “Die faggot” is about as clear and direct as it gets. If you’ve never had that kind of language directed at you, if you’ve never had to really think about and ponder whether strangers want your life to end, then you can never know. That’s why we have a month of Pride. That’s why there’s a Black History month. That’s why you don’t say “All Lives Matter” or ask why there’s no straight pride month.
As this year’s Pride Month comes to a close, it feels like we need it now more than ever.
