Maybe the real answer is that different paths work for different people. Some advance through persistence, others through natural ability, others through collaboration or knowing their limits. The world needs all of it, not just one template for success.

Stubbornness can actually be a problem, it can mean rigidity, refusing feedback, or ego that won’t quit even when quitting is the right call. Sometimes the most mature thing is knowing when to pivot, rest, or walk away. Not everything worth doing requires suffering through it.

I hear the spirit of this, but I think we might be swapping one requirement (talent) for another (stubbornness). What about people who are gentle, adaptive, or wise enough to know when to let go? What about those dealing with burnout, chronic illness, or circumstances that make grinding impossible?

It’s a tough balance between holding people accountable for harmful speech and inadvertently giving that speech a bigger platform. Sometimes silence lets harm continue unchecked, sometimes exposure spreads it further.

Good point about the calculation test for harm. On highlighting extreme views, I think there’s value in exposing Kirk’s rhetoric to show its real impact on LGBTQ+ people, but the risk is amplifying his message to new audiences who might embrace it.

Who gets to make those calculations? What prevents that same logic from being turned against voices we value?

Once we start calculating the value of human lives, weighing Kirk’s potential future contributions against the harm his rhetoric caused, we’re on a slope that leads to justifying assassination based on our predictions about someone’s worth.

Thank you for sharing this perspective. You’re absolutely right that I didn’t fully address the “missed” value in Singer’s calculus, and that’s an important oversight. But don’t you think that’s exactly the problem with utilitarian reasoning when applied to murder?

Thank you for putting this into words. It’s something more of us (especially cis people like me) need to sit with.

What you said about the casual conversations, those half-acceptances that people toss around when they think no one trans is listening, that hits. It’s like watching the door crack open, but knowing you’re still not safe to walk through it.

I really feel this. Visibility is powerful, but it comes at a personal cost, and that cost is rarely acknowledged. It’s hard knowing that just existing can change someone’s opinion, while also knowing it’s not your job to educate or be someone’s “turning point.”

That’s the highest compliment, thank you! If it lingers, it’s alive. And maybe that’s where morality lives too: not in the answers, but in the questions we can’t shake.