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I feel like there's a lot of ungenerousness that runs through some of the messier fissures on the left, which I normally stay quiet on because I don't have the experience or range, but there's nothing I find more personally alienating than the casual demonisation of introversion
I've never really been able to put into words exactly why, partly because I find this whole conversation so triggering, but also because it feels like asociality and antisociality are so interchangeable in so many people's heads I don't know where to begin
(And I've definitely been pretty ungenerous myself on here at times, and probably will again in future, so I'm not trying to judge anyone)
(And I'm thinking about the general tenor of the chat today, not on the individual exchanges it's sprung from)
When you're socially isolated for any reason, the whole culture is just screaming at you, you're a misfit, you're a loser, you're weird, you're boring, your life is empty, your life is a waste. People use 'shut-in' as a pejorative and our realities as cautionary tales
A lot of people are saying these things facetiously now about their own lives under lockdown - how the conditions so many of us already lived under pre-pandemic (and will continue to afterwards) are an intolerable hell that any reasonable person should want to escape
For many, life under lockdown IS intolerable and unsafe. But from others, whose main struggles are with the universals of boredom and temporary loneliness, some of these messages are unhelpful to those of us habitually isolated by disability and/or poverty (as most of us are)
So many people unconsciously replicate them, not meaning any harm. I've done it myself in the past. It just hurts when it comes from others on the left. And ofc I'm not saying 'please don't talk about this stuff' because ofc you need to. Please just think about how
Honestly, it IS understandable when some see judgments about their lives in what to a lot of other people look like unambiguously innocuous comments about missing parties, even if the OPs didn't intend them or deserve anyone's anger. I miss parties too, I've missed them for years
Social connection is so often blithely assumed to be a function of moral virtue or failure & countless times I've seen attempts to articulate this stuff get beaten down with derision or hostility & dismissed as trivial, self-pitying, individualistic, even incel-adjacent
At the risk of being ungenerous myself, so many of the comments I see every time this discussion comes up, even from people I know aren't bigots, have an air of "I would simply have positive social experiences"
Again, all I'm asking is that we think about how we engage with these issues. It's an accessibility issue for the left if nothing else
Like, so much organising (at least as we're used to thinking of it) presupposes social capabilities that are not universal. I've personally found it harder to get involved in collective actions in recent years for those reasons, and I know others have
To anyone who's read this far, thank you
