the moment of liberating clarity when you resolve the tension between being a good person and the requirement to pretend to be stupid by deciding not to be a good person anymore ?

"I really want to do the thing! All of my friends who are just like me are doing the thing, and they look like they're having so much fun!"

"You can totally do the thing! You just have to sign ... this loyalty oath!"

(reading it) "What? I can't sign this. It's, it's—" (rising horror) "not scientifically accurate!"

"Everyone else who is doing the thing has signed the loyalty oath."

"Could I ... do the thing, without signing the loyalty oath?"

"You could, but everyone you ever interact with for the rest of your life will assume that you've signed the loyalty oath; it would take five hours for you to explain what you actually believe, but no one will listen to you for that long because they'll decide that you're a hateful lunatic thirty seconds in."

(A beat.)

"You know, honestly, my life is fine as it is. I don't need to do the thing. I'm glad my friends are having fun."

(dies of cardiac disease fifty years later without having done the thing)

(Earth is consumed in a self-replicating nanotechnology accident)

that spectrum from cis to natal to actual depending on whom they're talking to