Tonight, the public accounts of sexual minority associations in mainland China are collectively bombed.

After watching Apple get crushed with an iron fist last week, this week is finally our turn.

Maybe boiled frogs in warm water. This year's 517 event went relatively smoothly. During the previous meeting and discussion, we emphasized what to do if you are intercepted by the security department and what to do if you are interviewed. It seems that these things are already commonplace. For the Rainbow Night Run that night, I went earlier, and a police car drove past me, which was looking for us. The group members reassured me: "They are also routine."

Since when have you been interviewed, blocked, reported, intercepted, tracked... It has become a common sense encounter for us to do public welfare for sexual minorities on campus. We know the red thread exists, and it keeps pressing on us until it dyes us red and disappears. And in most cases the option seems to be to avoid it, self-censor, and find another way.

Is it because you don't have the guts to fight? Growing up in mainland China, everyone knows the cost of resistance (not only politically, but also culturally). Knowledge about the Cultural Revolution and June 4th is learned from warnings from family members and teachers:

"Don't talk nonsense. People will die, but during the Cultural Revolution..."

"Don't talk about politics and don't be in the limelight. Your dad's classmates went to Beijing and never came back."

But the internet environment at that time (about 10 years ago) still allowed me to express a different voice, and I could still discuss various social issues on the basis of not having a prescient (national) position. The first time I knew the word "coming out" was in 12 years, when the news about Ho Yunshi's coming out of the closet was reported on Weibo and in mainland entertainment programs, and was "seen". The first time I learned about the concept of "transgender" was from a report on "Thai Shemale" by Sohu News. I still remember that my mother read the report and thought it was very interesting, and then let me read it. In stark contrast to this, now I am retweeting LGBT-related tweets in the circle of friends, and my mother called me immediately after seeing it: "Send something positive, don't look at these negative things every day."

What happened over the years? From top to bottom, the promotion of slogans, the directional output of a single news perspective time after time, and the disappearance of incidents... shape us within the walls.

Complex social issues are simply dualized, "positive energy" and "negative energy", "patriotic" and "hate the country", "two-faced"... These definitions are so vague but deeply rooted— - You and I can't define definitions, but it is "politically correct" to know how to use these concepts. Fundamentally, it is the deprivation of the individual, and "people" can only exist as a concept of "people".

I used to think that the most frightening thing was not being silenced, but being enveloped in ubiquitous fear, and everyone was in danger; however, now, it seems that you hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, talk about collectivism, talk about patriotism, and talk about national security. .. Evil is glorified into the good of the country, and everyone is willing to pay for this dream.