Originally a comment by Maureen Brian on If you are a cisgender, heterosexual, white person, please do not write about Orlando.

I was nearly a social scientist so I will write about anomie and alienation. I was a pupil, a parent and a school governor and I will write about a very rich country with so poor an education system that it equips many of its citizens only to live in fear. I am a feminist and I will write about the damage which rigid definitions of gender and gender roles do to us all. I am an internationalist and I will write about the horrors of imperialism, including American imperialism, and how the damage of that imperialism goes on harming people for generations. I was the chair of a political think tank and I will write about politics – the politics of social justice and the politics of segregation by religion, by skin colour and by sexual orientation. I am a socialist and I will write about all this and much more. I am human and I will weep when I hear the soundtrack of the Gay Men’s Choir singing in Old Compton Street last evening, where not everyone present was gay but all were united in grief and in solidarity. I am free both legally and mentally and I will speak and write what I please.

Once I have written it, only when I have written it, I will trust my friends and my political sparring partners to tell me whether what I have said or written is bollocks. This is not a judgement which can be made before the event.

As for you, Mariella Mosthof, go take a running jump!