Why are we so angry at each other?

I’m Berlin Sylvestre, the editor here at OUT FRONT Magazine — nice to meet you — and I’m reading along at some of the comments on our Facebook page. The lion’s share of them concern a few opinion pieces we ran in the Jan. 20th I’M OFFENDED! issue.

So let’s address this. I know some of you are angry at a few of the contributions, but hear me out.

Quickly, before I begin, I’d like to personally invite anyone (as I have time and again) to submit your opinions and ideas to us. This has been an open invitation since I began nearly two years ago, and it’ll stay open for as long as I remain. Please take me up on the offer if you feel your voice needs to be heard! I’m a huge fan of seeing life through others’ eyes, if even for a moment.

Now, if I may …

OUT FRONT is a magazine of LGBT perspectives. I don’t agree with the views expressed in every single piece we run, but I allow for them because this magazine’s intention (among many) is to create dialogue around issues that are important to us, that impact us in ways some didn’t even realize. It’s a display of perspective.

And yes: A few of our writers used pseudonyms (two, actually) which came with reason. Internet backlash is increasingly gnarly business and I’ve already gotten some pretty … let’s just say “unsavory” (and quite personal) remarks about a few of them that we knew would come.

The goal was to air out some of the friction we experience in our community. There are many who feel their voices are shut out. Some might argue that they should be; some might say, “Who are we to decide that?” As a journalist and the editorial director of this publication, I tend toward the latter sentiment. I believe in the power of letting people disagree freely via the printed word. The pen, as the saying goes, is mightier than the sword, and there are many lessons to be learned by putting down our swords and listening to one another.

The platform that I’M OFFENDED! rested on was the (to some “audacious”) notion that people in our community believe different things and they’re often controversial. Further, not all of them feel safe to voice their opinions on certain matters because “I’m offended!” often rolls into vicious attacks that subsequently delegitimize that person’s lived experience. That’s it. Some people feel shut out.

So I said, “Well, then. Let’s talk about the things that people only whisper about in their living rooms. What happens after we release the pieces is up to the public and will demonstrate whether we as a community can remain civil in the face of tension, or whether we’ll dissolve into anger and reveal ourselves in another way.”

So which is taking place? That’s for you to interpret.

My aim, at any rate, was to show “how the other side lives” in their minds … to explore why they feel the way they do about safe spaces, trigger warnings, cultural appropriation, guns, so on …

And why should we fear friction? Why should we allow ourselves to tear into one another over opinion-based pieces in which someone shares their grievances with the community?

Why are we so angry at each other?

We’re not a homogeneous group, this community — and that’s ok. What I personally find unsettling (and this is my opinion, of course) is the fact that we lash out like we do.

When we hear something that doesn’t immediately settle on our ears in a way that we’d prefer, we pursue cannibalism over camaraderie; accusation over education; intolerance over understanding. It seems as though some in our community aim to inflict pain upon a speaker who disagrees with us, rather than showing them (through opinions of our own) the possible errors of their ways, the potential fallacies in their logic. We go on witch-hunts using the authors’ bylines and look for ways to smear the writer, to hurt them.

And what if these actual human beings are writing from trauma of their own that they’ve been unable to speak on because they’ve been told that their pain isn’t as distressing as others’? Perhaps a silent misery that’s manifested itself as something a reader finds ugly and offensive … and after they’ve been given the chance to say, “Here’s what hurts me,” we show our solidarity by barbing our words and offering no help.

How can we ever educate one another in an echo chamber?

Please think about that.

Again, I invite anyone to submit to OUT FRONT. I don’t believe in censoring opinions UNLESS … unless unless unless … the aim is to defame. There’s no use in that. (Except lawsuits; defamation is great for that, come to think.)

I hope you’ll forgive me that I must acknowledge quickly that at least one thread (so far) on the cultural appropriation column resulted in a civil disagreement that led to (essentially), “I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks!” That was always my goal in opening these floodgates; that we’d talk. Not stomp on each others’ hearts. Talk.

So here’s your mic: Berlin@OutFrontOnline.com

(And remember what I said about defaming, yeah? Let’s try to stop being so cruel to each other.)

Cheers from RiNo,