That phrase can sound a little B.S., but the basic concept comes down to this - there is a difference between "I'd like to know about this, can you tell me more?" and "I need you to explain this to me. If I don't get it, then it's not a thing."

For the record, I have never and will never hold the opinion that people are obliged to share with me or converse with me for any reason (with caveats in navigating personal and day to day life of course). I will also never hold the opinion that just because something is unknown or unfamiliar to me that it is dismissable.

. . . It is not minimum_wage's job to educate you or anyone else, especially when the information is relatively widely available, and no harder to get a hold of than when you were writing a paper in high school.

So seriously, that's like the "sunscreen good, no sunscreen bad" of communicating with people who are part of a minority, or anyone really - young, old, male, female, anyone whose experience in life is different from yours.

Indeed, indeed, indeed. What I was more trying to say is that we shouldn't shy away from open dialog, especially on issues such as these, because every conversation is a learning opportunity, both for the people conversing as well as for anyone else observing the conversation.

Now that I have a huge wall of text in front of me, it looks like I need to get my some coffee going and some reading started. I'm excited to see where this takes me and I appreciate all the time and effort you're putting into this.

What does it mean to be human? It's complicated

Truth.