Posted by siouxsie_homemaker on 2004-08-20 13:36:02
Post Subject:
I think few people are going to be friends with someone whose political veiws are violently opposing to their own.
But I think a really important thing to point out is that balance is critical. When you swing the other way and just surround yourself with people who agree with you, you face certain problems. When everyone thinks the same within an insulated community or group, no one ever challenges one another. Also, you start to loose the ability to tollerate or converse with people who disagree with you on anything.
When I lived in the Bay Area I noticed that everyone I was friends with or even generally exposed to had just about the same veiwpoint on everything. Some people would call that a utopia, when nearly everyone is vegetarian/vegan, pro-sex third wave feminists, pro-choice, and not sizeist, homophobic or transphobic or openly racist. But then they all also listened to similar music, and had the same kind of clothing tastes... And they looked down on anyone not in their group, vanilla lesbians, people without the same priveledged psuedo-political middle class white kid education, and *especially* supposedly "ignorant" country music listening mid-westerners. Which is hard for me, cuz those mid-western hicks are my family.
It was so stifflingly and conformist and no one even seemed to realize it.
Moving to San Diego I had a huge period of culture shock in for me. When punk guys in bars used the word "fag" in a sentence I almost dropped my beer. But I've actually come to befriend some of those guys, some of whom still think it's hot to watch two straight girls make-out. And I can talk to them and reason with them and get them to change their minds sometimes, which is pretty cool. And in turn, they taught me to relax and little and not judge others as harshly.
