> I can assure you that there was nothing performative or hollow about my comment. OP said something that resonated with me, and so I shared my story in an attempt to bridge and find commonalities.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say at all that what you're doing was somehow performative. By saying it feels "hollow", I mean that when you are on the receiving end of an action like this it often feels hollow because you have no relationship with the person. They are skipping several steps in the relationship development process from zero to "I want to engage with you on something that is deep and painful".

This may be totally fine for some people, but to me (and apparently to the person I was responding to) when it happens I feel like I am becoming some sort of symbolic prop to the person. It's uncomfortable. It doesn't feel like a human interaction at all.

My intention wasn't to cast doubt on your motivations, just to tell publicdebates that I understand the feeling he was describing.