It was the first thing I published exclusively online, and it went viral as nothing I’d ever done before had, picked up by alternative weeklies, reprinted as a small booklet by a graphic designer, forwarded over and over by email in those days before social media. I argued that we had a lot of power, a history of forgotten and undervalued victories, that while some things were getting worse, the long view—especially if you were nonmale, or nonstraight, or nonwhite—showed some remarkable improvement in our rights and roles, and that the consequences of our acts were not knowable in advance.
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