The power of projection (and strawberry milk)

I still remember one day in high school — I would have been around 15 — I walked across the road to the convenience store (7-11 equivalent) with a friend to get a drink.

I went to the fridge, grabbed my regular (toxic, artificial) flavoured milk and put it on the counter. My friend looked a little concerned and asked, "Don't you feel... you know... embarrassed to buy that?"

I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about — "What do you mean?"

"Well.. don't you think if you walk around with a strawberry milk.. people might.. you know.. think you're gay?"

My mind was blown. It had literally never occurred to me that there was any association between drinking strawberry flavoured milk, and being gay. It was a berry.. the berry was red.. when you mix it in milk, it goes pink, why would anyone possibly make that connection to a sexual orientation? I mean, I could see that for a pink t-shirt (which would be a trend only a few years later) but for a milk drink?

Anyway, he went on to say that he actually liked strawberry milk himself, but was always too scared to buy it in case he was judged and criticised for it. Bizarre.

I filed that away as a crazy point of view and continued to buy the (toxic) milk product for years to come, but it always struck me as strange how he could even make that association.

As you might already have guessed, years after we left school and fell out of contact, I got a message one day from another friend, directing me to a facebook post where the (strawberry milk) friend had — after disappearing for a few years to another state — come out as a woman. A transgender-woman-in-the-making sitting next to me on the bus every day and I had no idea.

This anecdote (and other clues) immediately came to mind, with a realisation that this person was living in a totally different reality than I was during those high school years. Their point of view was completely divorced from what I was looking at as a result of their base presumptions. Could they have convinced me of their side, and could I have convinced them of mine?

This is not an argument on the issue of transgenderism, but rather an insight into the challenges that we experience trying to convey information to people who are operating from a totally different base reality. Further, how much stronger a hold will their presumptions have, when theirs is the 'consensus' one?

PS: How successful would the 2026 version of myself be, trying to convince the 15 -year-old me that the liquid inside that strawberry milk carton (which had gone through rigorous government-required health protocols) was actually a boiled-to-death, toxic substance designed to slow-kill the populace? Hard to say.