Life sucks for all.

Gay people are ‘oppressed’ because some people think being gay is an abomination. Trans people are ‘oppressed’ because they don’t fit the gender binary. Women are ‘oppressed’ because they are controlled by men. Black people are ‘oppressed’ because they’re hated by white people. Straight white men are ‘oppressed’ because everyone thinks that they get everything and so ignore their problems.

The culture war within the Western world wants to claim that every one and their femson are feeling some kind of burn and that it’s someone else’s fault. We’re all pointing fingers at such and such groups to make us the ‘in’ group and them the ‘other’. Be it men, feminists, Muslims, gay people, trans people, liberals, conservatives, atheists, centrists. Everyone is offended and everyone is expected to be offended.

I can’t say that I have neutral views on Donald Trump – I don’t like him, I don’t hate him, he simply is another politician I care little about – without someone getting all worked up because I’m supposed to have strong views on this man I barely know. (Not to mention I’m not even American). I’ve always been told I have strong opinions, but I think everyone has strong opinions. We’re in a world now – mainly thanks to the internet – where everyone has to have some massive opinion about something. You can’t watch a TV show or a movie without someone getting outraged because of some character’s clothing.

But I won’t reiterate stuff that’s already been said by me and people with way more influence than me. My point here is exactly as the title is: life sucks for all. Life fucks us all. It doesn’t matter where you come from, what colour your skin is or what genitals you have. LIFE. IS. FUCKING. HARD. I’m only twenty-one and I have yet to meet a single person who hasn’t had to undergo some sort of sad or horrific problem, from their girlfriend leaving them to their father hanging themselves.

It’s become the fashion to complain about things and to blame them on your gender, colour or sexual orientation. The sad irony of this is that thousands of people last century fought for the right to be judged PAST skin colour, gender and sexual orientation. What happened to looking at the person inside? When you say that a straight white man has everything, you are judging him on the basis of his colour, gender and sexuality. When you say a gay black woman is oppressed, you are judging her on the basis of her colour, gender and sexuality.

I saw a show the other day called ‘Burgerz’. It was a one-person performance; a trans person had had a burger thrown at them in the face two years ago and no one did anything. What irked me the most is the fact that another person can do that to another person. It didn’t matter if the person was trans, black, white, atheist, Christian, conservative or bisexual. Throwing a burger at someone on the street and yelling a crass word at them is disgusting behaviour and no one deserves to have that happen to them.

I appreciate that it must be horrible having to be trans and to go through things like that. As much as I dislike the over-the-top media attention being given to the LGBT community as of late, I definitely think it’s horrible and sad that people can be treated so cruelly based on factors they did not choose. Trans people have gender dysphoria, a medical condition. I have panic disorder, a medical condition. Are we really that different? We both have problems that freak people out, that some people don’t know how to handle, that change the way in which we are treated by others in all facets of life.

But here is the important bit. The world does not owe you anything. The world should not have to change for you to accommodate your personal problems. If we lived in a truly equal society then everyone would be treated fairly regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and the like. But that also means they wouldn’t be given special treatment. In a truly equal world, black people and women would not be given quotas within the workplace or education. The best person for the job would be hired regardless of race and gender. Because if we treat people as individuals, we don’t put them on pedestals but we don’t look down on them either. We see them for the content of their character.

The world would be a better place if we stopped talking about how ‘this group of people are oppressed’ and ‘that group of people are MORE oppressed’ and just accepted that every single person who does and has ever existed endures struggles and suffers relative to their anatomy and circumstances. All we can do is try to work through our problems, rather than use them as excuses to not become better people.