Speaking of trying to do good things with the time I have, I quietly unfriended two more people.

No, that's not me doing a good thing.

In both cases, they were people I was not particularly close to who posted things that I found repellent.

One was a Mother's Day post about how the holiday is only for real women with a cruel April 1st "joke" about men in dresses.

I acknowledge that the majority of people -- even if they may struggle with some gendered expectations --do not feel a big mismatch between the gender they feel and the one assigned at birth. If there is something I don't understand, I try reading books about it, but you can decide you don't need to understand and that is not automatically harmful.

If you do not pay attention to notice that more people are being questioned and accused about gender, primarily consisting of women, where their birth assignment and how they are perceived and present matches, and you also choose not to notice that a lot of this comes down to men being able to aggressively police women based on their perceived attractiveness, thus making it a way of extending misogyny... that is becoming harmful.

If you have discomfort with your ability to identify someone's gender, or with whether you agree with someone's gender BUT YOU DO NOT WISH TO CAUSE HARM, you have options. You can silently sit with your discomfort, you can try learning more, and you are always free to mind your own business.

In this case, the person appears to be someone I went to school with, but I have no memory of them.

That is not as uncommon as I might hope. There is a handful of people whom I really don't remember at all, but I accepted the friend requests and they seem to be good people with interesting hobbies or strong friend groups or fierce attachment to their families. If my memories about them and affection for them are all due to Facebook, I can live with that. Zuckerberg has made a positive contribution!

However, if we haven't built that up, so there is no past relationship to go on and my strongest impression of you is bigotry, a soft delete seems preferable to creating a relationship that is based on me telling you that you are horrible.

Under different circumstances I might feel differently.

The other person was a little bit trickier. Though she and I have not interacted a lot, I am very fond of her parents and have good memories of two of her three siblings.

She posted a picture of Dr. Fauci calling him truly evil, claiming to have done hundreds of hours of research, and begging people to protect themselves from his devilish corruption. Then the replies go on about how evil he was with AIDS.

No. He's not evil. He's not perfect, and he does have a bit of an ego as some AIDS activists know. (A doctor with an ego? Imagine!) 

He is also a knowledgeable professional who tries to operate ethically, and she is using conspiracy theories to pile on.

I also remember seeing the people celebrating when his Secret Service protection was removed by Trump, castigating him. 

Her language may be part of a trend that leads to his murder. It may not; there is so much hate and aggression going around that it is hard to accurately predict where it will end up.

Regardless, she is spreading hate and ignorance. The fact that she believes that she is right does not make that better.

Because of my affection for her family, should I have tried harder? 

Possibly, and in other circumstances I might. However, remember that post about masking that really offended some people and they tried to take over the thread and one got mad and called me obviously an ignorant person? She was a part of that. She was in more of a "just asking questions" part, so it did not lead to a rupture at that time, but it led to me feeling that additional communication would not be productive.

(I thought I blogged about that, other than the original masking post, but I can't find it now.)

I do not have boundless energy. 

I will try and make a difference when I believe I can. 

I will make efforts to stay informed and clear so that when I do say something it can be useful.

If all logic dictates that something would be a losing battle but my heart tells me that I need to fight, I will. 

That's about all I am comfortable committing to.