but there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home!

Sophia, the ghost from 1875 who haunts a lamp I got at Brimfield: I wasn't wondering. why would I be?

me: ...but climate change is making it worse even since I was a child. and I had to explain climate change to you last week

Sophia: yes but haze and smoke in the city is normal, isn't it? coal fires for cooking (even in summer), gaslights burning, and so forth

me:

Sophia: the nature is different, but I'm quite accustomed to the concept. and this will last how long?

me: until tomorrow probably

Sophia: after which the air quality will be...?

me: excellent, I imagine. it's really good here 98% of the year, and good the rest of the time barring a few days like this one

Sophia:

you are in the medieval era and you have this role!

Q. You want to raise every boy as a girl? Yes.

Q. Why? A boy will learn to hate girls as long as he is raised in such a way where he is treated as better, and superior to, his girl peers, whenever he is cruel to girls. So, instead, we raise boys as girls.

Q. What if they say they are not a girl, and want to be acknowledged as boy? Then you know they are a boy, so you must make sure to understand them as boy, and not a girl.

Q. What does it mean to be 'raised as a girl'? That's up for you to decide. The only difference is that you should not raise boys any differently than you raise girls, since you raise every boy as a girl.

Q. Girls and boys are raised in specific ways for specific purposes, so it does not make sense to raise boys as girls. If you raise every boy as a girl, then there is no being which is not raised as a girl, so anyone raised as a girl necessarily must learn to do anything and everything to grow up, without restrictions on tasks, labours, or interests.

Q. But boys and girls are different. All two girls are different, and raising girls in one specific way destroys this individuality in favour of moulding girls to serve the same master. Still, the girls resist to live life on their own terms. If girls can be raised such that they know they can do anything they want, including not being girls, so too will boys raised as girls.

Q. Why not raise every girl as a boy? Because if a girl does not exist among boys, then the girl is made.

Q. Why not raise girls and boys as themselves? The self must be made in a world where girls and boys can first and foremost be themselves. One step towards this goal is to raise every boy as a girl.

Q. The way people raise girls is cruel, so why would you raise boys with that cruelty? If you raise girls with cruelty, then you should stop being cruel to girls.

Usually she doesn’t notice how heavy a crown can be. Not forgets — Gertrude could never forget the sheer gravity of this thing that made her who she is, this role and responsibility she’s made her own — but she lets the burden of it slip from her awareness.