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I envy that you aren't around these people. Where I live, and this is admittedly more pronounced among women than men (Austin), you have to keep silent about anything you disagree with. I've lost at least 5 friends over the past two years over these kinds of disagreements. And I know that's why, because suddenly I never heard from them after I admitted how I feel. I also stoped hearing from a number of friends around the country who I knew from a group of who are now prominent liberals in the media, nonprofit and political establishments after I started writing publicly, and I was kicked out from that group for being insufficiently woke (this group contains elected people and lobbyists to boot). I am envious that you don't find yourself surrounded by these people. E.g. I worked for Google here back in 2014, and even then you couldn't disagree with the diversity industrial complex (no joke, I was on the first diversity recruiting team when it first was formed, and believed it in it). My partner is a relatively apolitical moderate white dude from CT. He was highly doubtful that the type of person I describe existed, and then he met the people I have unfortunately come to associate with. Now, I could choose to have no friends, or I could choose to keep my mouth shut in company and tolerate it while letting out what I really think here. I think it does also speak volumes for me that few of my IRL friends even bother reading any of what I say; most don't bring it up even though they've seen what I've post on instagram, and we pretend I don't say those things when we're hanging out. I can't even refer to someone's sex without one of them, for example, implicitly correcting me by saying "femme" instead of woman.

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Everything you just described is self-inflicted. You choose to be around these shallow virtue signalers. They are NOT your friend if they ditch you based on you thinking only men have penises (or whatever bad-think-speak crimes you commit). You choose to be in this bubble with terrible people. Why? You get one life. Why spend it this way? There are literally tens of millions of Americans (and a few billion others around the world) who are NOT like these cretins. Do yourself and your partner a favor, and move on to greener pastures. And, if you don't, quit complaining, because it is your choice to be around them.

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Well we’ve been trying to leave for years; moving is expensive but I’ve known for a while that I need to and am working on it. If you were me and you’d worked ten years to stitch together a handful of friends in a city in which you started with zero, would you just choose to be friendless until you left entirely? My choice is either that or tolerate it. And, you’re being unkind. You left a comment, and I answered it against my better judgment. “Quit complaining” is a shitty thing to say. You can also just have chosen not to read this. Why exactly do you have to be unkind in your phrasing?

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Apologies. I wasn't trying to be short with "quit complaining" - I was just pointing out that you are in control of the people you choose to be with. That's all. Good luck to you.

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You’re not a woman; there are specifics to being one of a certain age that limit you to other women, most of whom don’t read. You are quite welcome to ignore my work and perhaps consider how you sound commenting like this on work people spend hours on.

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I'm a woman and cannot imagine living the double life you describe. David is right, you have a choice, use it.

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I'm not a woman.

So I guess I'm not allowed to comment if I disagree with the majority of commenters on here.

The "specifics" that make a woman's position off-limits for criticism from "non-women" are at the heart of everything the so-called "illiberal left" says and does.

Ironic?

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No, you can complain about those. I’m talking about David’s insistence that I stop complaining. If women are at the heart of the illiberalism, he’s not necessarily going to understand how they treat each other with regard to enforcing said regime. He does not get the brunt of it in the way other women do, because of the specific relational aggression employed:

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