You give bigots smoke so they know that you know that theirs is an ideology of fear and lies and conformity and boredom. You go toe-to-toe with these people because they need to be challenged, and you need to be affirmed, and because there’s a kid like you somewhere who deserves to know they can fight back. Maybe you grew up this way, too, and adolescence was complicated by the terror of realizing you are the thing you were taught to avoid, and you’ve spent your entire life dismantling the logic that tells you you’re not okay only to bump heads with people who haven’t had to or wanted to do this work. When you’re queer and comfortable in your skin, you are scrambling somebody’s circuits, someone who grew up believing “gay” meant “weak” or “bad,” who “has trouble accepting your lifestyle” because they’ve been socialized into believing you have chosen to reject a holy, natural order of cisgender, heterosexual love and procreation. I spent a good amount of time in the last six months wondering why Lil Nas X pays any attention to haters and homophobes online. The six-month shitstorm following Lil Nas X throughout the rollout of Montero has been a clinic in the intersecting moral inconsistencies you see in American culture and how they’ve trickled down and settled in hip-hop.
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