Even when you're being super careful and think you've checked all your presuppositions, you're going to fuck up. Not just "might." Literally everyone fucks up at some point. I am not immune. No one is.

The question is not "will I fuck up," it's "what will I do when I fuck up." If the answer is "apologize and keep trying to do better," you're probably mostly okay. If the answer is "double down and defend my fucking up," you might be better served by fucking OFF.

(Also, I want to differentiate between "whoops, I fucked up" and "whoops, I got caught." Not the same thing. "I did not realize that cute TikTok about the lesbian experience was transphobic, I'm sorry," fucking up. "Yeah, but it was funny, let me send you ten more just like it,"

...is getting CAUGHT. My early work is FILLED with ableist slurs I didn't realize were ableist. That's not okay, but it's a reasonable result of the culture I grew up in. Saying "I cannot fix the books already in print/the pipeline" is reasonable.

Saying "yeah but like, I grew up in the 1980s, that's how we talked, no one's really OFFENDED by those words, whatever," or "I will make an effort to change, thank you," and then continuing to write the same things is NOT reasonable, and your second callout is getting caught.)

And sadly--but truthfully--part of why we fuck up is that we don't know everything! We CAN'T know everything! Every time we talk about anything outside our own precise sphere of life, we risk fucking up from sheer ignorance.

That's OKAY. Not in the sense of "be happy not to know things, fuck up with impunity," but in the sense that "I'm sorry, I didn't know," is a full sentence, and now you've apologized AND learned something!