There was a time, about a decade ago, when I thought we were moving past the nonsense. To borrow from the days when the male pronoun was deemed gender-neutral in certain instances, “I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together”—humans share (roughly) 99.9% of DNA, after all, with what are essentially ephemeral extras being the things that differentiate us. We’d be a boring lot without that .1 percent, am I right?
Unfortunately, I was wrong. Bigotry has returned with a vengeance. A reminder: One need not love someone to accept them, just as one need not accept them to respect them for who they are.
Ryan Cassata (he/him) is, to quote the press release, “an award-winning singer-songwriter, actor, performer, published writer, LGBTQ+ activist, and transgender motivational speaker.” I am admittedly ignorant about his back catalog, but “I Feel Like Throwing Up” is a rollicking tune that bodes well for his forthcoming album on the famed Kill Rock Stars label, Greetings From Echo Park. The catchy song, although inspired by his bouts with an autoimmune illness and Lyme Disease, can be heard as a metaphor for life writ large: “My friends, they/Will sing this really loud/But unless a stranger sings it/I won’t really feel proud.”
The Old Grey Cat 
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