I think the problem is trying too hard to understand, when it's something that can't be understood.

I feel people have problems that really affect their lives badly. They've gone through the checklist of things their family and education has told them: they went to school, worked hard, got married, had kids, etc, yet they still feel bad every day. Either they're still poor, hate their work, spent too much on a house, car, or other things, realized how expensive and hard kids can be, what have you. They dont understand why they did everything that they were supposed to but haven't gotten anywhere.

They see people on TV or people they know that they feel have made it. They don't know some just got lucky, or made it by stepping on people like them. These successful people look at who criticize them for being successful and say they're just jealous and they shouldn't have to give back anything they have just because they have more. The haters just need to go away and stop trying to take what isn't theirs.

The wanna be successful hears these things, and it's a better explanation than they come up with, and since it's coming from someone who's success they admire, they buy in.

For those of us not on that trajectory, it's like seeing something funny in a picture that now you can't not see it. It doesn't make sense to look at any of this without seeing the pieces of their story don't make sense. We know that most LGBT, people of other faiths, or that come from different places aren't the ones keeping us from our dreams. Most of them are no better off than most of us. But the other people think if I don't have x, it must be because someone else took what was supposed to be mine.

The South Park episode were Kyle is trying earnestly to learn what it's like to be a black person, but every time he thinks he's got it, Tolkien tells him that he's got no clue. Finally at the end, Kyle comes to the realization that he's never going to understand, but that it's just something he has to accept that he'll never know personally what it's like, he just has to know black people get treated differently in a negative way and he has to try to be aware of it, and Tolkien tells him that now he gets it.

We don't need to really understand why people think bad things about others for no reason. I can't imagine really being attracted to the same gender, to feel I'm trapped in the wrong gender, to be another race, or to have any religious beliefs, but over the years I've come to learn that those are the situation for other people, and if I want to be a good person, that I have to understand people live in realities that I personally can't understand. But I don't need to understand it to that degree. I just need to listen when people say they have a problem and what they say will solve it for them. And when you realize that's all you need to do to be a good person to someone just like you as it is someone totally opposite of you, it gets easy to understand and be good to anyone.

Some people take a long time to get to that final realization, and some never will get that they don't need to get it. They're the ones that will always be stuck on the other side from us. But like the other people different from us, we don't need to hate them for it. I feel I'd be missing out on a lot of things if I never made friends with my gay friends, people of other faiths, or my friends of other races. I can feel a sense of pity and loss for those that can't embrace that in their own lives.

But I don't need to condone crappy behavior when they talk hateful or disrespectful of anyone, just like I wouldn't if a lib friend was talking shitty about someone or a group of people. I can say if you're going to act that way, I'm not going to have around you for a while, or if you never stop and we can't ever get together without sharing your bad takes, then we can't be close anymore. At that point, it's on them. But if they can listen to me in the same way I can listen to them, all isn't lost yet.

From an old AMA

It's not the name I was born with, but it's the name I live under and have for about a decade. I originally changed my name to Magpie maybe fifteen years ago, because I was part of a forest defense community where everyone took funny names. Then eventually I met people who had grown up being called Magpie because it was short for Margaret. I wanted a more feminine name, so I adopted Margaret.

Killjoy came about because I needed a last name for writing, and I had a bit of a reputation for, well, being a killjoy.