Let's stop 'tolerating' or 'accepting' difference, as if we're so much better for not being different in the first place. Instead, let's celebrate difference, because in this world it takes a lot of guts to be different.
Interpretation
Embracing differences is essential for personal and societal growth, rather than simply tolerating them.
Kate Bornstein's quote emphasizes the importance of not just accepting or tolerating differences among individuals, but actively celebrating them. In a world where conformity is often favored, recognizing the courage it takes to be different can foster a more inclusive and vibrant society, ultimately contributing to our collective growth and understanding.
In practice
In a speech promoting diversity at a workplace event.
I know I'm not a man-about that much I'm very clear, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either, at least not according to a lot of people's rules on this sort of thing. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other-a world that doesn't bother to tell us exactly what one or the other is.
…gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white.
There's a simple way to look at gender: Once upon a time, someone drew a line in the sans of culture and proclaimed with great self-importance, 'On this site, you are a man; on the other side, you are a woman.' It's time for the winds of change to blow that line away. Simple.
We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.
In our society, as people pass out of young adulthood, they tend to relate to themselves more in terms of what they are no longer than what they are now, and that's psychologically low-grade devastating.
We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.
...while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.
The only right a Christian has is the right to give up his rights.
Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?
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