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I am bisexual and trans, so of course I won't be besties with someone who thinks LGBT people are repugnant. I'm not Muslim but half my family are, so I won't let Islamophobia slide as a minor character flaw. But this also extends to groups I'm not part of - if someone thinks black people are inferior to whites or throws around racial slurs about Mexicans, I wouldn't want to be friends with them either. Your beliefs influence the way you treat people and I don't want to tacitly accept the hosed up beliefs of others. I also have no obligation to be friends with anyone, much less people who view marginalized groups as subhuman. Obviously I wouldn't drop every single person who has racist/sexist/etc. thoughts because nearly everyone does on some level; racism/sexism/etc. is ingrained into society and that inevitably influences us. I will talk things out with friends who say something ignorant. But if someone is deeply bigoted or doesn't attempt to better themselves, I have no interest in being close with them. "Don't be hateful" isn't a high bar to set for friendships.
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Sep 19, 2016 01:16
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this thread has been an incredibly effective honeypot for the various closet racists like secular humanist to come out and feel morally superior for their ability to find common ground with fascists and murderers while they jack off about "black on black crime" let's be real here for a sec. maintaining friendly relationships with political opposites is a luxury for the ignorant and those who have no actual stake in politics. cishet white guy du jour might clutch his pearls at the idea of the trump presidency to show some hollow solidarity, but i doubt his life will be markedly worse for it. it's much easier to compartmentalize the fact that your friend is a neo nazi when you're safe in the knowledge that you're not on the chopping block of his rancid ideology. make no mistake - you do know these people. because of your dedication to being a milquetoast and never discussing anything of import with your friends and family, you may not be aware of it, but hideous ideas are much more common than you might think. trump did not become the gop frontrunner as if by magic. the people joining the ranks of fascist organizations in droves are not alien pod men. part of being an adult is learning to deal with people that have different opinions than you. the options for doing so, however, are not limited to unconditionally accepting troglodytes into your social landscape. drawing a line on who you associate with for your own peace of mind and personal safety is not "just as bad" as being a racist. we have to believe that people are at least a little responsible for the things they believe or else we enter some miserable calvinist hellscape. i am not erecting an echo chamber for myself. i am intimately familiar with these ideas and the people that espouse them, i've thought about them at length, and i have decided, you know, nah, i really don't want to be friends with the alt-right crowd. i've tried, in the past, but it's really quite awkward when somebody blatantly advocates for your death and then says "no offense".
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Sep 19, 2016 01:31
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Main Paineframe posted:Funnily enough, I don't remember these kinds of sentiments being directed against people who supported Ron "Repeal the Civil Rights Act" Paul because he said he'd end wars and legalize weed. And those folks made a lot of the same arguments you hear from Trump supporters, like "Oh, he's just being Ron Paul, he isn't actually going to repeal the Civil Rights Act" and "no matter how racist he sounds, Congress isn't going to let him roll back civil rights, so forget about that AND VOTE FOR LEGAL WEED HELL YEAH". Don't you post in the Libertarian thread? The first thing that happens when someone wanders in and says Ron Paul has some pretty good ideas let's all get ripped and end the fed, is posters falling all over themselves to pin him down on defending Paul's anti-Civil-Rights-Act nonsense and then calling the paulite garbage for agreeing with Paul or calling him stupid garbage for any form of "well a federal government hostile to civil rights wouldn't actually matter" response. Regarding the thread topic, I've found from personal experience that it's impossible to be good friends with someone who has anti-gay beliefs. This has nothing to do with a political litmus test and everything to do with the simple fact that someone who is bigoted against you personally treats you differently. Personal issues that straight friends can discuss with each other, you can't open up about those with the bigot because your sexuality makes him uncomfortable. Showing affection for your SO the same way straight people do makes the bigot uncomfortable. Even if you're One Of The Good Ones, you probably have friends who are too effeminate/flamboyant/whatever for the bigot and you have to choose between them, either because the bigot won't hang out with them or because if he does he'll treat them poorly and they won't want to hang out with him. It's just not worth it. And when your friend group is racially and culturally diverse then bigots of all kinds just don't fit in. That's why having friends who are racist/sexist/homophobic/religion bigots/etc because "we make fun of everyone equally, dude" is for straight white bros who have almost exclusively straight white bro friends and thus don't have to censor themselves from their bigot friends and don't have to worry about knowing anyone the bigots will alienate.
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Sep 19, 2016 10:23
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Tumblr dude/ette is 100% correct, OP. If you have fully internalized your political beliefs and fully understand the beliefs of others I don't really see how you can have a friendship with someone who runs wildly contrary to the things you think are important. Either they're not that important to you, the person you're talking to doesn't really oppose them, or you have a very superficial definition of friendship. Friends don't want friends' lives to be wrecked for the sake of their ideology.
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Sep 19, 2016 |
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Sep 19, 2016 20:44
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"the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the [minority]'s friend" [for their own benefit] We can disagree and still be friends, trust me 
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Sep 19, 2016 21:33
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FYI there are political opposites that don't have to do with people hating you for who you are. For instance: (1) What to do about GMOs / gene editing of humans (2) What to do about fracking, green energy, etc. (3) What to do about farm subsidies, estate taxes (4) What to do about gun control Lots of you in this thread are talking about religion, sexuality, and race as if those are the only ways you can be politically opposite to someone.
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Sep 19, 2016 21:49
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Secular Humanist posted:See, this is why having friends of opposing political views is such an alien concept to progressives. Anyone who disagrees can only ever be a racist or a sexist. Of course black people aren't "racially" more predisposed to crime, but in America there is a strong cultural tendency in many poor black communities to glamorize crime and to not cooperate with police under any circumstances. It's a problem unique to black American culture that can only be solved from within black American culture. The fact that pointing this out, and that black on black violence at large is becoming a "right wing" topic is really depressing to me. Especially when it's a black person trying to have the conversation, and they get written off as some kind of race traitor for their dissent. It sucks, and it just provides a trojan horse for right wing nutjobs to smuggle actual racism into the conversation under the guise of "having the tough conversation that liberals are afraid to have". Most people I've met that would describe themselves as "secular humanists" would agree that mass incarceration, police abuse, the drug war, etc are major problems, do you disagree? It seems silly to blame any crime issues exclusively on culture when we made political decisions to start arresting and charging a hell of a lot more people suddenly in the 80s and 90s, often for very minor crimes.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:01
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Saladman posted:FYI there are political opposites that don't have to do with people hating you for who you are. For instance: There aren't any moderate positions on sexuality as near as I can tell. It doesn't work to say "I'm concerned about gay marriage, therefore I propose that we cap gay marriages at 10/year/state until we have all the data" or "Workplace discrimination against gay people is bad, unless they are like really in your face gay, then I'm ok with it". I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that the politics of identity are those that most drive our relationships.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:53
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most of my closest friends are to the right of me or apolitical. my best friend is pretty sexist but left wing in every other area, and the rest are either centre-left, centrist or fairly right wing. my friends that are left wing annoy me more, because they put less thought into their political beliefs. one's a misanthropic sam harris loving anarchist who wants to go fight for the kurds and the other is a hopelessly naive vegan who genuinely believes that the green party can rule the UK. none of my friends voted brexit: the most right wing because he works for a french company and the next most right wing because he realised that the majority of people in favour of brexit were idiots and or cunts
Whorelord fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 13:41
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I guess you can have vaguely-friendly aquaintances who are your ideological foes, particularly if you live in an area (like mine) where a ton of people are poor and don't vote or talk/think about politics regularly. I don't expect the people working next to me in whatever poo poo-job I have at any given point to share my beliefs in full social egalitarianism and the violent eradication of the bourgeoisie. But I don't get the people who believe bestfriendships or romantic relationships can work this way How can you have trust and intimacy with somebody who wants to hurt you? PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 13:54
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I feel the issue is less with the views themselves and more with the factors surrounding why they hold them. If they grew up in a sheltered environment and didn't have a chance to be exposed to beliefs and experiences dissimilar from their own, I'd forgive a lot more than if they had a more worldly upbringing. I'd sooner be friends with someone who has a completely warped worldview built out of ignorance than a supposed liberal who thinks BLM need to tone down their rhetoric if they want to be taken seriously.
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Sep 26, 2016 18:00
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I work with some christians that have some pretty hilarious views on the gays and a lot of other topics, but are otherwise nice people and would never actually do anything bad to anyone. They just grew up homeschooled or trapped in christian private school and their only social circle are people they know through their church. It doesn't bother me so much because I know most of those people if pushed outside their bubble and forced to work with or be friends with people who turned out to be gay they'd change or at least tone down their views big time. Still, these are people I'm simply able to work with, not be close friends with.
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Sep 26, 2016 18:05
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It seems like a lot of you are using 'politics' and 'values' interchangeably. I despise the U.S. Republican Party passionately, but don't assume that Republican voters are evil creatures to be shunned. I wouldn't rule out friendship with a person affiliated with any of the political parties on our general election ballots. When we get into hatred based on immutable characteristics, like racism, then we're crossing the line into a violation of my values. There's a strong correlation between values and politics, but they aren't the same.
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Sep 28, 2016 21:11
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Politics are values put into practice, if your politics don't indicate your values it's only because you're pig ignorant.
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Sep 28, 2016 21:31
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Epitope posted:"the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the [minority]'s friend" [for their own benefit] Don't doxx me.
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Sep 29, 2016 01:25
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