I think like. The thing regarding the last post I shared (which I mentioned in the comments but want to expand on a little more) is that it absolutely sucks to be having a conversation with other adults and get a reminder--absent any other evidence that mentioning a thing is a problem in the moment--that you're supposed to constantly be an ideological babysitter for a hypothetical gullible person. Those comments and analysis that are like "well I know this, and you know this, but if I don't remind you to say it out loud little Johnny Dipshit is going to overhear us and immediately internalize the wrong message" are exhausting and quite frankly it's usually marginalized people who are expected to Know Better and Set A Good Example and so are constantly getting corrected on it out of nowhere. Often from other marginalized people who have been corrected often enough that they're rushing in to make sure it doesn't happen again! That sucks!
I wrote about this more here but this is merely annoying when you can't express a thought in isolation without someone popping up to go, "Ah-ah-ah! You're not wrong but let's not give a hypothetical person with no agency or ideas of their own the wrong moral instruction :)" but what struck me most about the backlash against what is now called "Helicopter Story" was how much of it boiled down to, "Okay, even if it was written by a trans woman and we all know her intentions were good, does she not understand that the Cis are watching?!" in a genuine panic. And I keep seeing this happen where, in the absence of tangible harm, the discourse actually gets turbocharged by everyone envisioning what a person who may or may not be present or even exist might think.
