Friends and colleagues discussing something. Each of them is a topic for someone else. Image via.

Human Beings Are Not Topics.

Carrie Speaking
5 min readOct 25, 2015

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Egalement disponible en français.

Dear readers,

Today is a special day for me. The Equal Rights Week that I organized on my blog is coming to a close. There would be a lot to say about being a writer and blogger and leaving your writing space to let others talk in your place. It is a wonderful experience that I encourage other bloggers to go for, and I shall write something about this in the near future.

But for now I want to talk to you directly, because you too are writers and speakers. Whoever you are, you do write. Even if it’s just Facebook comments or emails... And whoever you are, you talk about various topics. Recipes. Concerts. Work. People. The news.

What I want to tell you slowly developed in my mind in the course of this special blogging week. After my opening post about those people in France who had sported a murderous indifference during the debates on marriage equality, I left my blog to let other bloggers and artists write. Carina Sitkus (Oh, Those Feminists!), ReelCarina (Why We Should Get Rid Of The Term Non-Heteronormative), Deerandbeard (Themis), Armand (Trans. An Interview.), Afortnightaway (Women’s Quota: We Are More Than a Percentage!). Yes, it sounds like a lot has been written about women… by women — my hat goes off to Deerandbeard, one of those convinced male feminists. There is also one article about transidentity… led by a trans.

As you can see, every contributor talked about something that was not indifferent to them, but on the contrary that made their heart pump faster and that made a difference for them.

There are two things I want to say about that.

First, none of us talked about equal rights within the frame of ethnicity or people with disabilities. In a way, maybe these topics felt farther away from our pumping hearts, because none of us exhibits a darker skin or a visible, noticeable disability. Maybe we as contributors didn’t feel like broaching those topics either. For instance, I am a lesbian, I have fought for my rights and those of other LGBTQI+, but… I’m not a trans. The perspective of writing something about trans people was humbling and actually bordering on humiliating. As my wife put it this week, trans people make us lesbians feel like the fight for marriage equality were a picnic party (in summer) (on a beach) (with free margaritas). So I just reached out for the closest trans person I knew and humbly asked if he would kindly accept to talk about trans persons and let me be his pen.

Second, experiencing discrimination (or being very sensitive to and empathetic with discrimination experienced by others around us) makes you realize something that most people, in my opinion, tend to forget:

People are not topics.

This sentence I’m writing comes from a discussion with a friend of mine in Quebec. Last October, when we spent some time in Montreal, we discussed marriage equality and the social unrest that rose in its wake in France. At some point, I told my friend about my exhaustion over these matters. The way I was losing my patience toward people who, unable to really discuss marriage equality now that it was legally recognized, started to discuss family rights for homosexual couples and their kids. I told her about the anger I felt when I was sitting in the train, buying fruits on the marketplace, having coffee with family or friends, and that people started to broach the topic of, well, me.

Yes, me. When people start to engage in a discussion (even friendly, even positive, even favorable, even encouraging) about the right that homosexual couples have to marry and build a family, I am not a human being anymore. I am a topic.

In fact, that’s exactly how my friend put it. She said, about the people who protested against marriage equality, the people who “hesitated” about my right to build a family, or the people who showed a complete indifference about me getting the right to marry or not:

You know… this debate about your civil rights… Well, for you, it is all your life. For them, it’s just a topic.

I am absolutely not saying that you should shut up, nor, conversely, that you should be an advocate for every single discriminated person or group on earth. I am not such an advocate myself. I am unable and unwilling to be that advocate: I, too, have just this one life and I, too, want to enjoy it and sometimes rest my heart in blissful ignorance or stubborn indifference.

But when you are discussing a matter that affects Others (and I am grateful you do, for you may be doing it to fight for them), remember, every second, that you are discussing human beings. Not a topic.

Human beings suffer, topics do not.
Human beings resent, topics do not.
Human beings love, topics do not.
Human beings are discriminated, topics are not.

You can be indifferent or exasperated by one of those topics about discrimination (like marriage equality while you are straight and sick, or straight and jobless, namely straight and with other important matters on your plate). But do not be indifferent or exasperated by people who experience discrimination.

Someday, you might realize that you, too, are “just a topic” for someone else. Oh, the hurt and resentment you’ll feel then — please do not inflict those upon someone else.

This article is the closing post of the Equal Rights Week on Carrie Speaking.

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CARRIE SPEAKING, aka C.I.D
Travel Writer, Blogger.
(Read more on
http://carriespeaking.com)

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