About Wedges (Not the Shoes) and Why They Freak Me Out a Little

I read something today that asked me to choose between safety and solidarity. I’m choosing to slow down instead.

Welcome to the very first Tuesday edition of The Backroads. If you missed the memo at the end of Friday’s Peru story, check the P.S. at the bottom for the new schedule and why I’ve decided to stop filtering out the funnier, slightly more sarcastic version of myself.

Now, let’s talk about wedges.

And I don’t mean the kind you’d wear to a garden party (though we could certainly have a conversation about those, too). I’m talking about the kind designed to split a community right down the middle...

I started reading a post here on a Substack a few days ago and I felt it almost immediately.

That internal eye-roll that says, “Oh, honey, absolutely not.”

Not because it was challenging. Not because it was about LGBTQ stuff. I can handle disagreement. I can handle nuance. I can even handle someone being wrong.

What I have a harder time with is when something is written like it’s a report, but it’s really a pitch.

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For me, this is where ADHD matters. I don’t get to skim something unsettling and set it down like nothing happened.

My brain takes it as a puzzle and a threat at the same time.

I’ll still be contemplating it while I’m trying to focus on my skincare regimen tomorrow morning.

And trust me, a distracted man with a bottle of high-percentage retinol is a recipe for a chemical disaster.

That’s why I pay attention to the tone of a piece, not just the topic.

This one was pushing the idea that we should separate the letters. That “LGB” should peel away from “TQI.” Like it’s a clean, logical update. Like it’s just people “realizing” they don’t belong together.

And since I think aloud, I say to no one, “Where are you even getting this?”

Because that’s a huge claim. Not a personal newsletter claim, it’s a “this is what’s happening in the world” claim. The kind of claim that needs numbers, context, definitions, and something sturdier than a confident tone.

Instead, it had that familiar shape. The one that’s hard to unsee once you’ve been through a few cycles of chaos online.

The Shape of the Pitch

STEP ONE: tell you the coalition is falling apart.

STEP TWO: suggest it’s not the people in power doing the damage. It’s the people next to you.

STEP THREE: offer you “safety” if you’ll just agree to stand further away from someone else.

That’s the wedge.

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I’m not saying there aren’t real conversations inside LGBTQ communities. Of course there are. We’re people, not a logo. We’re messy and human, and we have different needs and experiences. We disagree. Sometimes loudly.

But this wasn’t written like “here’s something complicated I’m struggling with.”

It was written like:

“Here’s the problem. Here’s the culprit. Here’s the solution. Now choose a side.”

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That’s when I start paying attention, because I’ve seen this move outside of LGBTQ spaces too.

It’s not just “LGB vs TQI.”

It’s women pitted against women.

Immigrants pitted against immigrants.

“The good ones” versus “the ones making it worse.”

It’s working class people blaming the working class person next door instead of the systems that keep everyone exhausted.

It’s disabled people being treated like they’re asking for special treatment instead of basic access.

It’s “stop making it political” said to the people whose bodies and lives are already political whether they want them to be or not.

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The World Doesn’t Care About Your Labels

And the thing is, the outside world does not make the neat distinctions the article pretends exist.

People who hate queer people do not pause to ask whether you are the “acceptable letter.” They don’t go “Oh wait, you’re LGB, sorry! Our bad. Carry on.”

They see a bucket. They see a target. They see a way to shrink what counts as human.

So when I read something that says, in effect, “we should separate ourselves,” I don’t read it as a harmless identity debate. I read it as the first cut in a pattern that keeps cutting until everyone is standing alone.

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The “Third Place” Fantasy

Also, and I need to say this plainly, blaming trans people for shifts in gay and lesbian public life feels like utter bullshit (sorry mom).

Gay bars didn’t start changing because trans people exist. The world changed.

Apps changed how people meet. COVID changed how people gather. The cost of living changed where people spend their nights. Social life moved into group chats, living rooms, and private spaces.

Lots of people, gay or straight, stopped doing “third places” the way we used to. I don’t need a villain to explain that. I just need to look outside.

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This is personal for me because I watched the “third place” fade long before anyone started blaming trans people for everything.

I’m from Minnesota. I came out in Minneapolis in the late 1990s.

In my thirties, I was going out two or three nights a week because I was making up for lost time.

My two best friends and I were essentially running a marathon of bad decisions, and if you asked the bartenders, we were just three middle-aged gay men refusing to accept that the sun was coming up.

It was all very professional, I assure you. (Shut up, boys, you were there too.)

Back then, one of my favorite clubs downtown had blacked-out windows. They didn’t want people driving by to see a room full of gay men. And they had a reason. We were targeted.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Finally, someone said it,” do me a favor and Restack this. Click the little square-arrow icon at the bottom. It tells the Substack algorithm that I’m not just shouting into the void, and it saves me from having to beg for attention on LinkedIn. Nobody wants that.

Cade and I got married in late 2019, before COVID.

After our reception, we went back to one of my old stomping grounds. It was a Saturday night. Ten or eleven.

This used to be wall-to-wall. Shirts off, music up, everybody celebrating each other in the way gay bars do. But, it was dead. Where there used to be hundreds of people, there were maybe a couple dozen.

So when someone points at trans people and says, “That’s why your community is different now,” it feels less like truth and more like convenience.

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The Cost of Commentary

I used to post a lot of heavy, constant commentary on social media. And although it helped me stay informed, it came at a cost I couldn’t afford anymore. It was eroding my own mental health, and I could see it activating others in a way that didn’t feel helpful. So, I stopped, and I removed myself from the platforms that were feeding that cycle.

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Activated vs. Brave

I’ve learned the hard way that being activated all the time doesn’t make you brave. It makes you tired. It makes you reactive. It makes you easier to steer.

That’s part of why this stuff lands like a small dose of fear. It’s not just an article. It’s one more reminder that the world can turn. That progress can reverse. That scapegoats get chosen. That people in power love it when the rest of us start arguing about who deserves protection more.

I’m not saying we can’t talk about hard things. I’m saying I don’t trust anyone selling simple solutions that require a smaller group to be sacrificed.

Especially now.

Because right now, the vibe out there is not “live and let live.” It’s “who can we blame.”

And in that kind of environment, the worst possible move is to help the blame find a clean path.

I’m not interested in standing in judgment of another marginalized group because they’re different than me, then acting surprised when that same logic circles back around.

If you want acceptance from the world, you don’t get there by practicing exclusion at home.

That doesn’t mean we all have to agree on everything. It does mean we should be careful about who benefits when we split.

So I’m filing this under a very simple personal rule…

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My Simple Personal Rule

When someone tries to sell me safety by asking me to step away from someone else, I slow down.

I look for the missing measurements.

I check who I’m being invited to fear.

I ask myself whether this is actually about truth, or whether it’s about control.

And then I try, as best I can, to choose the thing that doesn’t leave me standing alone.

–R. Michael

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As I mentioned on Friday, I’m moving the Stories to Friday mornings. According to my sources, it’s a better time to enjoy with your coffee over the weekend.

But because my brain doesn’t move in straight lines, I’m adding this Tuesday newsletter called THE BACKROADS.

If Fridays are for the deep-dives, Tuesdays are honest field notes on mental health, community, and the road ahead. It’s a bit faster, a bit sharper, and a lot more like the version of me you’d get in a real conversation

The Consent Clause: If you’re only here for the Friday memoirs and find my Tuesday observations “a bit much,” I won’t be offended.

You can go to your Substack Settings, click Open Road Adventures, and toggle off “The Backroads.”

We can still be friends on Fridays.

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While you’re here... Since I’m just getting the tires warm on this Tuesday thing, I’ve already dropped a couple of other field notes for you to explore.

• Trying Harder Could Be Sabotaging Your Focus

  A Galley Rule I Keep Forgetting

• Top 10 Reasons to Love Someone with ADHD

  For the ones who live with the chaos and still show up with heart.