A Curiosity

[Content Note: Harassment; abuse; bigotry; references to self-harm.]

I wonder if any of the people relentlessly urging me, either directly or via public commentary, to empathize with Trump supporters have spent the last year and a half of their lives being called every misogynist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic slur known to humankind, being subjected to every conceivable iteration of negative and irrelevant commentary on their appearance, being called a "race traitor," being told they should be thrown out of the country, and being admonished, right up until today with no end in sight, to kill themselves or told they should be killed?

You know what I have never done? Inserted myself into Trump supporters' spaces, including public social media accounts, to tell them I think they're wrong.

I have used my own spaces and platforms to advocate for what I believe. That's it.

But I have been inundated by people who do not show me the same respect, and who invade my space in order to harass me, threaten me, and tell me to end my own life.

For almost two years.

Why is it my responsibility to empathize with them? I'm not the one who lacks empathy in the first place.