why it is so important to converse

I am a stubborn person. I always have been, I always will be. Even me saying that sentence just goes to show that it’s true.

I know what I believe in, I know what my ethics are, I am aware of my moral compass. I am aware of the fact that sometimes they could be better, sometimes I do questionable things. But I am only human.

I also know that I can get carried away. I believe in something too strongly and defend it too fiercely. I know this can be perceived in a manner that will only slow my point getting across. In other words, I would do better if I just held myself back a little more.

For Dutch class - in which we basically do things that happen in English class in English speaking countries - we had to make a presentation with the topic “my controversial opinion”.

This naturally sparked many debates amongst pupils. The sole purpose of the task was that the opinion was controversial. It goes without saying that not everybody would agree with each other.

But debating and discussing was encouraged. In fact, after presenting your opinion you had to remain standing and had to defend yourself against any questions or remarks from people from other viewpoints.

My controversial opinion was the following: “all public buildings should provide gender neutral bathrooms”. (I will post my “speech” in a separate post”)

A friend of mine is extremely religious. I know that, all our friends know that and respect it. Her controversial opinion was that abortion should never be allowed. Under any circumstances.

Now, I could go into a tangent in which I explain why I simply do not agree with her opinion. But I will refrain from getting carried away, as that is not the point I’m trying to make with this post.

It is her opinion. She is entitled to it. I respect it, and I respect her for being able to stand in front of a class and sticking to her opinion.

However, I feel that we need to discuss how to discuss.

We are a mixed gender, mixed ethnicity and mixed religion friend group. We respect each other and so have managed to stay friends despite our differences. We are also not all in the same class (she didn’t have to watch my presentation, nor did I have to watch hers).

It goes without saying that we still talk about school and about tasks during break times. I asked her what her arguments were and listened in silence while she listed them.

I then asked permission to counter her arguments. But then it got heated. Very quickly. And I’m still trying to work out why and how it went wrong.

You see, the thing is that she wasn’t the only one with which I have had these kinds of conversations with this week. Everybody was talking about this task and about their opinions.

In my class someone had chosen “There are only two genders.” Theoretically, this goes against my controversial opinion. I am seen as an argumentative, activist person and so was expected to react to this.

And I did.

However, it did not go wrong in the way that it did with my friend.

My class is predominantly Muslim and during Maths we managed to have a fairly civilised conversation about gender.

I was impressed with how open people were, while still sticking to their own beliefs. I tried to do the same.

Together, we came to a conclusion on how we can accept people with different genders than man or woman, how we can respect that people have a choice regarding their own gender identity.

Even if we as cisgender teenagers can’t understand how it must feel to be transgender or non-binary or anything else, we can understand that those people are entitled to their own gender. Just as we are entitled to our own opinion.

My discussion about abortion with my friend was blown out of proportion. I know it was partly my fault, possibly because it physically pained me that a friend of mine thought that way.

We are so isolated in our echo chambers on social media, always seeing what we want to see and hearing what we want to hear that we forget that there are people out there who think in a completely different way.

And although we can all accept that that is the case, navigating these opinions is where it gets tricky.

I just hope that we as a society can find a way to navigate these differences as I did in my class and not with my friend.

I hope to find out why and how it went wrong in one scenario and why it worked in the other.

In other words, I feel it is necessary to keep conversing and to keep discussing. However, I still am trying to find the right way to do it.