Does anyone have any good stories about how you confronted bigotry and stood up to bigots in your life? Whether that be racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other kind of bigotry.

I did this just yesterday. I am a teaching assistant at a high school in a state with a Republican governor, and the local school board ended its mask mandate and allowed students to go unmasked in the classroom. I am glad to know that, at least in the history class where I teach, most students seem to hold progressive views or reject bigotry. But I look at any maskless student with suspicion. My suspicion was confirmed about one girl (white of course) who stopped wearing a mask after the mandate ended but was always quiet about her views until yesterday, and who also had relatives with Confederate flags on their Facebook profiles. We have a transgirl in the class, who is beautiful and wonderful and blesses our class. Well this other girl deliberately referred to the transgirl as "he". I made it clear that using the wrong pronouns was not okay and told her to apologize, but she still refused to use the correct pronouns and insisted she would keep saying "he", even as the transgirl started to look visibly frightened. The bigot girl was like "I don't care what y'all think, I will stand by my beliefs! I won't lie because you want me!" until she looked like she was on the verge of tears.

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