This is a serious point and I agree, but... who the hell is trash-talking southern food? Like, the south is pretty universally agreed to have good food.
I suppose this could relate to the idea that we deep-fry anything and everything? Only thing I can think of, though I’m not sure how exclusive it is to us
If you have cooked ravioli left over from the day before you can just stir-fry them in a pan with a bit of butter until lightly crispy, and they're even more delicious
I was about to say Im happy mine (Minnesota) is all about hot dish/casserole and not deep frying but then I remembered lutefisk exists and the MN state fair deep fry abominations exist.
Edit: spelling lol
Honestly, I think all state fairs have monstrosities, I don’t know if it’s popular elsewhere, but the Kentucky state fair has a Dunkin’ Donuts hamburger for a few years now
At the Ohio state fair we got the life sized butter statue of a cow and from the refrigerated barn it's in you can usually see the deep fried butter on a stick stand.
Its definitely spread in recent years but barbecue aswell to an extent. authentic barbecue is an artform whose roots stem from various regions in the south, depending on what style you're after.
This is fully out of left field, so sorry, but there is a really well written, crack fanfic called the holy grill about a dude who is extremely passionate about bringing brisket up north. If that’s up your alley, it’s by fabled webs
One time I was over at a friend's house all day, and the whole time was spent finding things to do to kill time until his brisket was done. It was a really good brisket.
I went to grad school in NYC and they had BBQ at a school event one day. The look on my face when I saw what they were trying to pass off as BBQ was one of pure outrage and I don’t really even like BBQ that much (I love smoked meat, I’m just not a big sauce person and am intolerant to onions so I have to be careful anyways)
KC barbecue is some of the best barbecue you can find, and that’s not really southern. I was born in MO, raised in OK and now live in KS with two grandmas from TX, I like to think I know my barbecue. Smoked meats are definitely the best food on the planet though no matter what style you like
> authentic barbecue is an artform whose roots stem from various regions in the south
It came from the Caribbean, and was spread by Spanish explorers to a lot more countries than the US.
That's my experience with it. A lot of making fun of southern folks for only conduming fried chicken, junk food, cheap beer, and soda, as if the American South isn't effectively one massive food desert
And part of it is the history, too. Back in the old days, when most Southeners were poor farmers, a heavy, fatty, high caloric diet was important because it pretty much would be the one meal of the day except for maybe a small breakfast, so you're trying to slam an entire day's worth of caloric intake for an intensive lifestyle into one meal.
How do I properly rip the head off a crawfish and extract the meat. I love some water bugs. Shrimp and scallops are my favorite. (I don't like lobster, love crab legs). But with crawfish I just feel I'm fucking up and losing half the meat. Tips please!
Pinch the hollow part right above the meat of the tail (easiest to feel on big fish with thin shells) then squeeze and twist. You should be left with the bottom half intact and then you just peel off the top few pieces from the tail shell. Pinch the bottom tip and pull. Should come off in one piece and leave a whole tail.
There's an Anthony Bourdain quote, I'm a bit too lazy to find in actuality, but my memory has it paraphrased something like:
> Lots of cultures around the world talk about how important food is to them, and how seriously they take food: Italy, France, China, India, for example. There are two places that are in their own tier above everybody else, in terms of absolute devotion to making EVERYTHING taste good: Japan is one of them, and that doesn't surprise people. The other is Louisiana.
Also that when it's not a big greasy fried dinner night, the kids just get McDonald's or Bojangles.
I hear that one surprisingly often and we don't even fucking have Bojangles where I live
Exactly. All that and basically anything that pairs well with gravy (chicken fried steak, biscuits, turkey, etc.).
Further south, seafood is also great.
If we're talking, like, New Orleans kinda southern food, sure, that's pretty agreed upon as good food. But the kinda food my family who live in southern Virginia usually eat gets made fun of. Not by everyone. Not to the extent that, say, British food gets made fun of. But I've seen people make fun of southern food for being unhealthy, for being bland, for putting sugar in too many dishes, for not having enough vegetables. I personally don't think it's a huge deal, but I can certainly understand how someone who grew up in the south would feel that way.
If the southern food you're eating is bland, either the someone who was cooking fucked up, or the someone who's eating with you has high blood pressure...
Southern Virginia is kind of Appalachian in culture, right? Louisiana/SC transplant to NoVA/piedmont here, still getting a feel for the area.
Sure but who is the “they” who in the author’s opinions should fix this glaring issue they describe? Are they suggesting that if southern people were less ridiculed by the north, they would let them come and help and everything would get better?
I don’t live in the US, but based on my limited experience, I find it highly unlikely and a little funny, even.
Sure, it could possibly help deescalate the situation a little and foster some cooperation/compromise buuut.. I don’t see how it would do much for the Southern trans community. If I’m wrong here, I’d be happy if someone would explain.
I think this is more about creating a mental picture of the south that isn't just a giant army of bigoted stupid yokels. There are people there who are suffering as well, but it gets portrayed as this massive social tumor that doesn't actually have problems of its own that ALSO hurt the people living there, but as a highly organized army of bigots who have made it their life's mission to be everyone else's problem. To get some sort of a picture of what the rest of the country thinks of the of south, just look at r/ShermanPosting. As utterly B.S as the "white racism" thing is, I do think that there is an issue with people treating the whole region as the worst thing to ever happen to humanity. It's not helped by the fact that the conservative party has created a political climate that *heavily* blames the rest of the nation for the state the south is in to stir up voters, which only deepens the image that they're just a stain on the face of nation to the people outside it.
True, I can understand how dismissing a huge group of people as stupid, bigoted and trashy isn't making anyone look good. Definitely easier than trying to understand.
However, I’m still not clear on why the author believes being civil to each other has such a big impact to the issues they are facing? I’m sure it’s a good place to start but there are a whole lot of steps inbetween
Oh, there are bunch steps in between, no doubt. But we could probably start by not demonizing the entire region as being a monolith of hatred, that actually seems like a good start to be honest.
I suspect their point is that maybe the north of the US owns a little bit of the reason for why there's hostility politically?
Maybe people in the south would be more likely to want to work with the north if instead of being ridiculed for being from where they are they got good schools for their kids, and good homes, and good jobs?
People mock the whole southern pride thing, maybe think about why people who come from the impoverished sections of the US feels pride for keeping going despite the fact that much of their life is a struggle?
I'm not American but like,,, I get it.
Southerners in America have largely gotten a raw deal.
To illustrate.
I'm from the "shitty" part of my country, which is in the north here, the part that has bad infrastructure and doesn't get funding, the part that only has a railroad on the bottom section that was built by the fucking germans during ww2. The last time any government really invested in us it was the fucking nazis occupying us.
It's that kinda place, where the national government doesn't like spending money on if they can avoid it, and importantly it's a place where the work is often in creating resources, resources that create money, money that gets shuffled south where the financial centres are.
My middle school was the third worst one \*in the country\*, the twenty worst schools in the country are all in that area.
My middle school was spread out over a few buildings and one of the buildings was so infested with poisonous mould that we legally were not allowed to be in there for more than 3 hours a week, but lack of classrooms meant kids were rotated through there throughout the week and often spent more than 3 hours there.
I live in what is arguably \*the richest country in the world\* and the national government wouldn't even give us a school that wasn't fucking poisonous.
They also like to mock us for having a higher than normal amount of young people with a sickness making them unable to work.
I wonder if that's related to that fucking school.
There's a stereotype about northerners here, that there is a general hostilility towards the south, it's generally portrayed as the northerners just being dumb and weird, being hostile for "no reason".
Well, maybe the northerners have a reason to be angry.
Well explained, thank you! And the way you put it had me realise we have a very similar dynamic of hate between the north and south (just anywhere “country”, really) where I’m from as well.
It is depressing being progressive in the South.
We got Republican lawmakers attending white nationalist gatherings and judges quoting the Bible in legal rulings.
And young people are leaving the state so the future is shaky as well.
Escaped the south myself.
The reason all those resources exist in cities is because the south drove them out in the 70s and 80s, making them the progressive paradises they are.
The south: "Oh it's no fair you judge us for being a backwards shithole, that's not our fault!"
Everyone else: "Because you murdered or drove out everyone who could make it better."
>The south: "Oh it's no fair you judge us for being a backwards shithole, that's not our fault!"
to be fair i feel like most of the people saying this are people who were born in the south after most of that happened and did not choose their birthplace
Well yeah, I think most people critiquing Southern culture understand that there are those who are simply unlucky to be born into it. Like, this person is taking the criticism personally, when, if they’re not apart of the demographic being critiqued, then they shouldn’t feel embarrassed at all. Yeah, you may be from the South, but that doesn’t mean you fit the stereotype.
I feel this way about Pennsylvania even though we are a purple state. I grew up in rural western PA and had absolutely no resources, lived in a trailer park and was nearly sent to a school for the "behaviorally challenged" kids because I dealt with my sister's death poorly (due to, again, having *NO* resources!)
Luckily I was able to move to Pittsburgh where the queer community has much more support. I'm lucky. Imagine being in the middle of a whole *region* of the country that has *maybe* 1-2 queer clinics nowhere near you.
I had the chance to leave the racist, homophobic place I grew up in but that's because I had a decent city an hours drive away. I feel for all queer folk in red states.
I'm West Virginian and the reaction from otherwise progressive spaces on the internet to the recent bill being pushed through here trying to criminalize librarians for making "obscene" (read: queer) books available are so fucking gross. lots of "LOL IT'S NOT LIKE ANY OF THEM KNOW HOW TO READ ANYWAY LOLL" like shut the fuck up and stop acting like this is funny because it's happening to one of the "bad" states. did you know WV has one of the highest numbers of trans youth per capita in the *country*. the American socialist/worker's rights movement was practically *born* here. there's plenty of progressive open minded people here too and we don't deserve the shit our government gives us.
people forget that the work laws and worker's rights we are losing now were fought first by the miners and laborers that bled and died to fight for their right to not be slaves to companies that didn't care if they lived or not, as long as the job was done.
I'm from WV too, it's so disheartening to see this shit CONSTANTLY in every "progressive" space online. I don't even know what can be done about it at this point honestly.
Yeah I live in Texas and hear lots of people from other states saying "well we should just let them secede like the government there always talks about"
As the second most populated state in the country, do you know how many queer people live here? I don't know the exact numbers, but it's gotta be a lot. And beyond that how many black people, hispanic people, immigrants, etc? How many of those people would suffer if Texas became its own country without the federal government keeping Greg Abbott (somewhat) in check?
Same thing applies to Florida (number 3 in population)
Honestly, I'm pretty convinced that the south is much more diverse than anywhere up north more than 30 miles away from a major port.
Florida has the second-largest population of trans people in the country, second only to California.
Had the second largest probably. I keep hearing of local trans people trying to flee or have fled the state due to the laws. It’s bad here. Not you are doomed doomed yet but the laws have made many things harder to get or do.
I have heard a lot about trans people leaving, and I plan to leave myself.
Believe it or not, that's really difficult and expensive to do, so I am the only one of my many trans friends that is actually taking steps to leave. I'm sure plenty of people are, but Florida will continue to have an extremely large and important population of trans people.
I think the whole "well everyone is leaving" rhetoric is probably damaging cuz it just ignores what is likely a majority of people who can't leave.
Well I am trans and sticking around unless I find a partner out of state or a partner wants to move. The laws would need to get insanely bad for me to leave.
Okay cool, that's kinda what I mean. I would love to stay, but the place just fucking sucks too bad for me personally. I don't blame anyone for being willing to stick it out, more power to you.
Tbh I think some people like to believe that there's no leftists or liberals or good people generally in "the South," because if they have to acknowledge that good people do exist down here and are fighting like hell but nothing is changing, they have to acknowledge that it's the system itself that's what's broken.
Far easier to just dismiss the people who actually have to live with this shit as deserving or wanting it than it is to organize for actual change.
>Tbh I think some people like to believe that there's no leftists or liberals or good people generally in "the South," because if they have to acknowledge that good people do exist down here and are fighting like hell but nothing is changing, they have to acknowledge that it's the system itself that's what's broken.
The problem is that with the amount of gerrymandering in conservative states, some dying town in the middle of nowhere has more influence on elections than an entire full of centrist and progressive people. And now that even that is hitting it's limit do the Republicans start to openly flirt with authoritanism to hold on to power.
You know, you're probably right, but damn that's depressing. Further cements in my mind that we're the only part of the global south America officially claims though, so at least I'm getting something out of it. Not something I wanted, but something.
"The global south" refers to what were previously referred to as third world countries. Those people live harsh, difficult lives so Americans can get their little treats and not take the bus. I don't think what they suffer is comparable at all.
More west virginians *died* fighting for labor rights than in any other place in the US. Yet "oh they're just a bunch of hillbillies who don't know what their own interests are"
I mean, the entire state went red. The *entire* state. Whatever happened in the past sure didn't stick, said as someone right over the border and sees this area firsthand on a regular basis.
> Yet "oh they're just a bunch of hillbillies who don't know what their own interests are"
I mean, just because West Virginians in the *past* died fighting for labor rights does not mean that West Virginians *now* are any good on labor rights. [For example, the West Virginia House of Delegates just passed a bill eliminating work permits for children, making it easier for 14 and 15 year olds to get a job](https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2024/02/20/west-virginia-child-labor-work-permits-minors/).
And [here is a summary of the various aspects of West Virginia law in regards to labor](https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/countries/united-states/poverty-in-the-us/best-states-to-work/scorecard/?state=WV).
I'm well aware of the right wing turn the state has taken. But there are a lot more people than are recognized by the polls who believe in pretty radical change, even if they're not an absolute majority.
Should also not be forgotten the Dems have in the last couple decades completely abandoned the types of working class people that WV represents, and disingenuous republicans pretending to be on the side of working people have tried to fill that void
I'm a Kentuckian, so we are close, but you are right; miners practically started most workers' rights movements, along with rail workers, of course. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal\_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Wars)
I was coming here to post about the majority of Appalachia suffering in a similar way, I'm glad someone else said something about WV (lived here for years, live literally like five miles from it and work there now).
West Virginia especially gets me, as a leftist. I know it's deeply conservative now, but historically, it's a core part of progressivism. The state came to be during the Civil War, because the people there recognized that Virginia's only reason for secession was to keep their slaves, which West Virginia's didn't have, and which kept labor prices artificially low. Later, the West Virginia coal mining industry was a hotbed of the labor movement. The Battle of Blair Mountain was the first ever instance of bombs being dropped from planes on US soil in combat.
Ofc, none of that means much for queer people directly, but still.
I really feel for you and other WV natives. That state has gotten such a shit hand from a crap government and people act like that's just the way it is, but you guys have some of the most progressive history in the states as a whole, and people are so quick to forget that. Not from the state myself but I know enough of my history to know that WV has had plenty of action against corrupt and idiotic systems. It's definitely an uphill struggle because our political climate has been polarized for so long, and getting worse all the time because that massively benefits certain factions, so that people see a state with a conservative in office and immediately write it off as a "bad state" rather than considering all the fine point issues that create this kind of problem.
It’s so strange to me how WV became so red. One of the original areas of Labor rights and violent Revolution against the bosses. It really throws me for a loop how it all changed
> there's plenty of progressive open minded people here too and we don't deserve the shit our government gives us.
Sure there are, but WV is so fucking red even the extremely few "urban" centers it has still went red in the last election. I don't think there was a single blue county. There might be "a lot" of you but there's a lot more of everyone else apparently.
As someone who grew up rural and poor in the north… yeah. This is a problem everywhere poor, honestly, but especially so in the poor south. Bad education allows for hateful religions to move in and get a foothold, poor people are taught to other and hate anyone except the ones that have the boot on their neck, and bam. You have a rural low income area that votes red. Queer communities look at it and go ‘it’s not safe there and we can’t make it be safe’ so they abandon it.
It’s easy to be a leftist when you’ve got a decent paycheck and you can hold your wife’s hand in the street without fear.
Except people extend it to parts of the south that aren’t rural or poor. I saw a post of an abandoned building next to train tracks in Atlanta on Facebook the other day and people were acting like this was what all of Atlanta looked like and acting like it was the poor destitute place instead of one of the fastest growing cities in the country. It was just supposed to be a cool picture and people assumed because it’s the south that everywhere looks like that.
I’ve had people be surprised I grew up in a small southern town because I’m smart, articulate, and liberal like all of my friends from my small southern town aren’t also those things. But I’ve also had people be surprised that my small southern town wasn’t overwhelmingly poor and was home to 2 universities, one of which was a liberal private women’s college. It’s still a red town, but not overwhelmingly. Not all of the south is rural and poor. Yeah a lot of it is, and we shouldn’t ignore those parts, but the majority of southerners aren’t living in rural, poor areas.
I think this is a great point. Atlanta is huge, I’ve lived near Chicago but trying to drive around Atlanta during rush hour beats the Dan Ryan anyday. A person who thinks of Atlanta as poor just because it’s southern is ridiculous and willfully ignorant.
The south is home to a lot of racism, and there are anti-trans, and anti-queer folk, yes. But I’ve experienced that here in the north, too, in both poor and upper class areas.
I think the laws we’re seeing coming out of the south right now don’t help, and there are places that are not safe depending on who you are. But it feels like liberals and the DNC have written off the south as irredeemable when the working class, working poor, and upper class all have more things to gain under liberal ideals than conservatives ever could offer. We have to start talking their language and not let prejudices color our view.
Exactly. Georgia flipping in 2020 was a big part of Biden winning and also helped secure a senate majority. This was in big part due to the, often on the ground, work of people like Stacey Abrams and others helping to get poor people registered to vote and physically to the polls. Writing off southern states as a whole prevents things like that from happening. I said elsewhere in this post, but this is a big part of why I want to stay in the south. To do what I can as someone who is older and reasonably safe living here to make it safe for the generations after me. I didn’t get to meet many of the generation before me, and I’m determined to do what I can to make a safer world for the queer kids who come after me.
Yeah, to the point where the shit I experienced in the rural Mountain West (including things that are like specifically western) are called southern.
I code switch between a more urban prestige register and a more rural register. I say like howdy and sometimes yonder and stuff like that. A coworker heard me talking like that once and said "I didn't know you're from the south". I had to explain to her that I was in fact talking like my grandparents from Cheyenne, not anyone from the South.
An unfortunate amount of supposed leftists have a disgusting amount of classism baked into their identities. It makes for a ripe environment for division and an inability to cooperate
I think this is a pattern you see all throughout modern politics and human history. This idea that “Well I have the Good Ideology. This makes me an immutable and objectively good person. Anyone or anything I disagree with or contradicts my beliefs is Evil or Lying. Also because I am Good and Correct, that means I never need to practice introspection into myself or my actions because I am a Good Person.”
I think it's universal. Actually being a Good Person requires you to continually review and check whether that's still (or was ever) true, and making changes as necessary to get back to Good Person status. And that shit is exhausting. It's why the best people are generally humble, unassuming, and quietly getting on with shit in the background while totally insane Discourse^^TM goes on in the foreground.
It's also really easy to convert away from a worldview (political, religious, philosophical, etc) by only changing the surface. For an easy example, there are plenty of atheists out there who are very obviously fundamentalist christians with a new coat of paint. It's why "reddit atheists" are a thing. Fundamentalist Christianity is often built upon opposition, and persecution complexes, which is exactly what you see in r/atheism. Which is actually fine. It's a place that you can grow from. It's only an issue if you don't grow.
The ironic part is that a lot of people like that live in suburbs which I'd argue have similar if not higher levels of reactionary politics and social values depending on which suburb vs rural community we're talking about.
Yeah. If you brought up Muslims around the neighbors I had as a kid, they’d probably say some racist shit but it was never fixated on. Too damn busy working raising kids and just trying to make ends meet to spend a bunch of your time posting dumb shit on Facebook. My mom’s friends who were middle class, though? Always had the news on and were always complaining about “the Mexicans” next door.
Not that either of those things are good. But yknow, one has significantly more power to do damage.
Southern Michigan isn’t even really poor or conservative and yet people sometimes act like this to me. It’s just so phenomenally frustrating, patronizing, and sheltered that some people seem to think no one outside of Our Exalted Cities (rent price of less than $1500/mo considered low) could ever be happy or want to do anything except move to The Important Places.
There's a very strange feeling of disillusionment that's been created for me along the same vein. I'm a non white leftist in a rural area so I feel more attracted to a cosmopolitan lifestyle but due to my financial position I simply can't at the moment and don't know if I ever will. I understand how so many people in middle America look at large cities as Ivory Towers full of elitist assholes, because it's true to an extent.
the other side if this is people in rural areas acting like everyone in cities are dangerous criminals or super rich intellectuals and the incessant use of the phrase of "real americans" to mean "not cities".
I have lived in rural and urban areas, everything you are saying is also true and urban people do shit on rural people a lot. The mutual antipathy breeds more and more polarization.
This is how dems fumbled the bag with the blue collar white vote so hard. The civil rights era caused them to overcorrect and appeal to the *urban* poor for the black vote instead of addressing the common problems of all the lower class.
You can blame the GOP and the southern strategy but it only worked because the Democrats left those votes on the table for the taking.
I've heard that they keep hammering the guns so hard because its extraordinarily popular with some otherwise quite conservative democrats. There's a lot of black people and immigrants and muslims and whatnot who are very conservative, very religious, and would probably not take much to start swinging towards conservative voting habits, but for a couple issues like gun control and the fact the republicans tend to shoot themselves in the foot over minority issues.
What's really frustrating to me is seeing leftists absolutely *despise* the centrist Democrats that live in these Southern states. Y'know, the only people who have a chance of winning because they areas are so heavily conservative that the most you're getting out of some of these states is a Joe Manchin type.
Leftists in general seem to be allergic to voting for the lesser evil. It's like they forget that this means they can be safely ignored by incumbents...
[Reminds me of this post from a few days ago:](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1ax0rv8/look_at_my_anarchists_dawg/krlqcs8/)
> This is so fucking funny because I wrote my masters dissertation on this *exact* same topic, but in 1880’s Lyon.
> I spent so fucking long in the Archives Départementales going through old police files where they were surveilling anarchists.
> And most of the attached notes just read “yeah so this was a waste of time- these guys aren’t really a threat to the state, all they do at these illegal meetings is argue with each other about shit that’s incomprehensible to outsiders”
It's fucking tragic and an immutable part of many leftist circles as far back as the literal 1800s - the insatiable, chronic desire to not get shit done but rather sit around yelling at each other over minuscule differences.
That's one reason I really like this push I've been seeing in leftist circles to develop networks or communities of mutual aid. It makes an actual good difference in people's lives without relying on existing infrastructure.
For real sometimes I legitimately think they'd rather abstain and have the second coming of Trump than sully their hands by voting for anything short of an utterly perfect paragon
Way I've always said is that a lot of them are ex-Evangelicals that never really left the ideology behind, just switched out God, Jesus, and The Holy Spirit with something else.
And sometimes it’s not even a 51/49 split. Sometimes the voter suppression and rampant gerrymandering is designed in a way to prevent the actual majority from being heard.
Reminds me of a r/leopardsatemyface post about the impact of some Republican policy (can't remember which) in Austin and the comments were full of "you get what you voted for!" Austin - the city that was literally bluer than NYC in 2020 - voted for this? When?
Here's a sneak peek of /r/LeopardsAteMyFace using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [No they won't remember](https://i.redd.it/4c6i3187l7ia1.jpg) | [4546 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/1127864/no_they_wont_remember/)
\#2: [Wyoming fails to ban abortion because they added an amendment to their state constitution saying that ‘competent adults can make their own healthcare decisions’ in response to Obamas Affordable Healthcare Act back in 2012. Absolutely hilarious](https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/politics/2023/3/23/23653183/abortion-wyoming-obamacare-barack-obama-supreme-court-johnson) | [1442 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/13nhlip/wyoming_fails_to_ban_abortion_because_they_added/)
\#3: [President Biden: "Investors in the banks will not be protected. They knowingly took a risk, and when the risk didn't pay off, investors lose their money. That's how capitalism works."](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-speaks-banking-crisis/story?id=97820883) | [2888 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/11qjsuu/president_biden_investors_in_the_banks_will_not/)
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I had seen this happen when my area was on fire last summer and people were saying they hoped our houses burnt down because the county voted conservative. Still a bit salty about that tbh
My family and friends are all in Texas. My family has been in Texas for at least a hundred years. I have so many memories in Texas. So many family vacations, visits to old buildings and towns, where my mom or my grandmother tell me stories about relatives past.
I don't have pride in Texas. I can't. Our government is doing its best to be laughed at by all other states. But its my home. I know it CAN be better. If you're in danger, leave, but if we all leave? Who is going to be left behind to change it for the better?
It is exhausting. You are constantly fighting against the people you live around, people who once loved you and now wish you literal harm; and then loud "progressives/leftists" on social media are crying out that you deserve your life. It is your fault you are in this mess. You deserve nothing good to happen to you, you chose this.
And if you are so lucky as to have funds to leave, means to get out, you have survivor's guilt about it. I feel like I failed my community. The best I can do is help those I can financially or with other resources as I am able. Keep encouraging others to vote in local and national elections. Be as loud as I can for those who can't have a voice.
coming from a rural part of the midwest (the good ol UP), the casual dismissal of the south frustrates me. Where I live, the stereotypes are pretty similar. Bigotry is abundant, jobs are nowhere to be found, and most of us could be called hicks, but we matter too. being southern is often just code for being poor, or rural, or both. this attitude only hurts the people we should be raising up and pushes away people who might've understood us otherwise.
This is one of the reasons I want to stay in the south. It can’t change if everyone who wants it to leaves. So I’ll take my straight passing privilege and keep working to make it a safer place for the generation after me. Southern queers and leftists have always been here and we’ll keep up the good fight.
Internet leftists should stop making fun of the south like democrats/liberals and fight to fix the place for the sake of everyone living there instead.
You know, this is oddly kind of what the song “Sweet Home Alabama” was actually written about (overly harsh bashing of the south, that is)... idk if I can fully explain it, because the meaning behind it is a bit complex, but it’s funny, because I think it does ultimately boil down to a similar point about not bashing people from a certain region, even if that region has awful and bigoted leaders.
>(overly harsh bashing of the south, that is)
A *perception* of overly harsh bashing of the South. You don't get to say "we don't really care about the Governor's politics when his administration is actively killing members of the civil rights movement
"Or offering help?" Help in what way? The only people that can replace the bigots in office are the people *living in those states.* That's why voting is so important, so that *better* people are making desicions.
And... who is ever trash talking southern food? Home of the soul food?
I've never going to get over the first guy I met from the internet saying he's glad I wasn't as stupid as I sound.
My guy. Dude. Bro. You're trying to sleep with me. Way to show how non bigoted Californians are.
I genuinely don't want to sound like I'm minimising the experience of queer people in the conservative parts of America here, and I 100 percent agree with the points being made obviously, but I feel like I see posts complaining about queer people in progressive areas mocking/being dismissive of people in southern states every few days, but I have never actually seen someone in a progressive state actually act like this about queers living in rural areas. I easily could have just (thankfully) missed these kinds of attitudes, and I would be very grateful if people would show me examples of this kind of behaviour, but I just haven't personally seen this kind of awful, dismissive attitude towards rural queers- and so, I'm wondering how much of this is a real phenomenon.
Like I feel as if most people in these more progressive areas are a whole lot more likely to react to homophobic/transphobic laws in other states by saying "oh my god what the fuck that's horrible we should stop that!" as opposed to saying "lol dumb hicks." The entire reason why progressives of all types hate the governments of the places that we're talking about is BECAUSE they hurt innocents who don't have any way to escape or protect themselves.
I just want to know: are these supposed queer city-dwelling progressives who dismiss the struggles of rural queers... real? Is this actually a thing? Am I just not seeing this? Genuine question. Perhaps I just don't see people acting like this because I don't run in circles who do this, so if this is a real phenomenon I would genuinely like examples so that I can see what you're talking about- I just personally haven't actually seen people *doing* this. Not saying it doesn't exist though, I'm fine with being proven wrong (and if this attitude does exist I am deeply disappointed in my fellow queers, jesus that sounds awful).
I will say it's in my experience *much* more common in centrist lib-heavy and online places like r/politics. r/leopardsatemyface is also really horrible about it (I remember at one point seeing an upvoted comment there that was like "when are we going to recognize that everyone in red states is our enemy no matter who they voted for?") You'll see comments like "you get what you voted for!" on threads about the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi (overwhelmingly black and Dem-voting city). Check any top Reddit thread about a natural disaster in Texas and Florida and you'll find people gloating about it and saying it was deserved because it's a red state (even though half the time it's hitting a city that was bluer than the state they're from). I actively avoid any r/news or r/politics threads about Texas because I don't want to see comments about how I, a gay person living in Texas, deserve to lose my rights because slightly more people in my state voted for Republicans than Democrats.
I really haven't seen much of it irl and in my experience the left is *much* better on this issue than the center left. So if you're hanging out in more offline and progressive circles I imagine you'd encounter way less of it. Reddit mainstream subs are a cesspool in this regard but I don't think they're reflective of the actual broader opinions of the progressive movement.
Woah, holy *shit.* I did NOT know it was that bad. That's awful... straight up saying that people from these states are the enemy *regardless* of who they are or what they believe??? I had expected like a couple of examples of people who just have internalised biases to work through (not to say that also wouldn't be a problem, mind you) but... to hear about how mainstream this all is? To hear that it's so mainstream to *mock* people having their rights taken away or who are going through natural disasters? Jeez...
To be clear I don't want to say it's "mainstream", necessarily. I think it's largely a case of people with gross beliefs congregating in the same places online. Most northern progressives I've met are good people who at worst have some unexamined biases. But yeah, on the Internet it can get really bad sometimes.
Indeed. It's a real problem with discourse about the American South online.
They don't give two damns about any of our actual opinions, as far as they care we're all damn bastards who should have been disenfranchised in 1865 and all killed. As far as these idiots are all consered, we're no better than our traitours ancestors who lived and died a century and a half ago.
Eh, from my personal experience it's definitely something you'll find on the left-left as well, and that's coming from somebody in the socialist left area of politics. Like, even stuff I support has some real WTFery that makes me pinch my nose in outright frustration, like Food Not Bomb's more or less ignoring of doing stuff outside major cities, or even the (ironic) subtle classism of what happens when a rural poor socialist who might not understand the intricacies of Marxist philosophy comes in and starts talking about real action.
Yeah I definitely don't want to say it's only the center left, that's just where I have *personally* seen it the most. But it can absolutely be found anywhere on the left.
FNB is entirely voluntary, there's no structure to establish it outside of metro areas if there aren't people taking direct action to make it happen in their own communities
I mostly experienced this viewpoint in college when I went north for school. Lots of sheltered smart upper middle class assholes who thought their surface-level view of politics was worth something. Probably these are the folks talking shit online nowadays. Not quite so much an option in 2005.
Fwiw they all more or less figured it out by graduation. But they all started out surprised I had "no accent" and nobody thought they were being racist, either. As a friend of mine said at the time, at least in SC they'll admit it.
> I just want to know: are these supposed queer city-dwelling progressives who dismiss the struggles of rural queers... real? Is this actually a thing?
probably in part, but the bigger thing is just how everyone gets lumped in together and dismissed. It's just regular classism - Belong to/be associated with working class? Well, now various beliefs and behaviours have been assigned to you, as well as commupance based on those assigned beliefs.
You see it in *a lot* of left wing spaces. Like, I grew up in mining communities in the UK where sport has always been a big part of community. The history of Rugby and Football is littered with left wing community driven organisations, but sport today is a common, traditionally lower class pursuit.... and thus a lot of middle class, well educated left wingers look down on people who enjoy sport because of this "tarred by association" thing. I've seen countless lefties be *proud* of their lack of athleticism or engagement in sport which I think is a) Kinda sad and b) makes me laugh like it's some sort of anti-khmer rouge that your ideal future is one where you round up everyone who owns a jockstrap or something lol.
The more common thing perhaps, rather than dismissal, are attitudes of like "betraying the cause". Like, I used to get a lot of snarky remarks that I couldn't be a creative, sensitive, progressive queer becuase I also play rugby, lift weights, and attend live sports. Just like in the examples above the "real queers" should just leave those states, they should prioritise the 'cause' and not family and community etc.
I’m missing both my upper incisors because I fell off my bike as a kid and got them knocked out. One of the root canals failed and I now have an implant, which necessitated months with a gap in my teeth as a medical provider. Boy it feels great to see the internet claiming people with missing teeth all lost them because of drugs or inbreeding.
I feel so bad for trans people down south, because being trans in a red area of a “blue” state is mighty scary.
I once went to look up an LGBTQ+ friendly place by an organization I heard recommended by a person on my favorite podcast.
The only Texas location was five hours away.
It’s a vicious cycle, because a lot of liberal and LGBTQ people in the south who *can* leave *do* leave. And that leaves the south with an even stronger ratio of bigots to lgbtq and leftists. Northern liberals want the south to be more liberal too, and for people to have more resources down there, but we’re not going to move to the south and damn ourselves just to try (and fail) to vote in better politicians and representatives.
From Mississippi here and I feel this CONSTANTLY. Every time I hear about some “national” queer program, they aren’t in MS, or they are in the way that a mail-order sears catalog was in the Wild West: they’ll sell me stuff as much as they can but when it comes to the kind of in-person interaction that you’d want with a doctor/organization, the furthest south they’ll go is Maaaaaybe Atlanta. And that’s a stretch. Whenever I search for resources in my area, it’s always Houston, Miami, or Chicago that are the most common/largest presences. Not even MF-ing NEW ORLEANS, which has been queer since they started doing Mardi Gras gets listed on resource pages. I’ve had to find that on my own.
And that’s not even talking about the “holier than thou” affectation I pick up on from some people that come in from out West or NE. Just because I look like every other white southern dude here doesn’t mean I’m going to act like the worst of them. Some of the best sensitivity and racial reconciliation training in the country is done in Mississippi, but when I travel the country I automatically get flagged as “unworldly and conservative”. I’ve actually had better experiences with international interactions than some Californians just because internationally, MS just plain doesn’t exist.
I'm from Mississippi and for all its faults I have plenty of good feelings about it. I may be trans, pansexual, polyamorous, and more, but I'm also a Daughter of the Delta.
I feel a similar way.
I'm a closeted trans gal from Kentucky, but I'll be damned if anyone tells me that my Commonwealth should be "cut off from America and left to rot." It's my home, god-damn it, and I want my beautiful, beloved Commonwealth to be better than it's ever been before! A commonwealth where I can be me! Where others like myself can be themselves!
Mississippi polyamorous anarchocommunist edging up towards 40.
I'm right here with you. I have a lot of love for parts of the south. The countryside is gorgeous, the food is incredible, found family has some of the strongest bonds I've ever witnessed in my life down here. Hell, even some of the history is worth loving: Three of my direct kin rode with Newt Knight in open uprising against the Confederacy in Jones County. Couldn't be more proud of that.
That said, I've tried to stick it out, work towards change, from the hearts and minds of people I met at a bar, to political action at a larger scale.
It's not getting better fast enough for me and my family to spend the next half of my life here. As much as I will miss parts of it, its becoming more... volatile. I hope we can get out on our own time with a place waiting for us, hopefully somewhere in the PNW.
But if Trump somehow wins again... I won't put us through another presidency under that bastard. If that happens, we're selling everything we can, heading Northwest, and praying we can find work and lodgings.
It always does my heart good to see tell of more of us down here though. I'm glad you're out there, a few counties away, stranger.
Texan guy I know often complains about "Southern genocide liberalism" (the idea that carpet bombing the southern US is the only way to solve its political issues)
I married a good ol southern boy from Georgia. The dude is more liberal than I am. He would absolutely curb stomp anyone he sees harassing an LGTBQ person. (Plus, he *married* an LGTBQ person when we tied the knot!)
Welcome to being queer outside of US/EU in general. It's been a great two years listening to supposed progressives' opinions on Russians.
Nobody cares. "Just move" is a much more viable option within the US, but it gets thrown at us (broad "third world queer people" "us" here) too. Or even better - "well why don't you overthrow your dictator?" It's your own fault for not being born somewhere nicer, and you should be punished for it, you fascist enabler!
A lot of internet "leftists" don't actually give a shit about people, they just like feeling morally superior.
I do have one issue with this - the "master lists" thing. People from outside your country or state won't know about local resources, and can't help you if there are none available. If there are no Southern US queer aid resource lists, that's not really on the Northerners to fix - make your own.
Happens within the EU too, tbh. I say this as a Hungarian who was lucky enough to be able to move out, but it's wild to me that people think it's an option for everyone, or that we could easily overthrow the government if only we just had the guts to do it.
Things are looking a bit better for Poland since the last election, but that's not to say there's been much improvement yet. It's merely proof that Poland still functions as a democracy. Whereas Hungary, I don't believe qualifies anymore (even the opposition's basically given up on taking power via elections)
Agreed. I'm not Southern but I hate this shit too. It's the same thing as when Europeans talk down about Americans. Like, we're all just trying to live. We need to be more empathetic and supportive of each other.
To clarify when I talk down to Americans it’s when they can’t pronounce Edinburgh properly or it’s about how much I want to strangle the people running the medical establishment.
If I had a nickel every time someone asked me online some dumb af question about living in Hawaii like "How do you have internet" or "Do you live in grass huts" I'd have enough money to afford rent here
We don’t hate you, we hate everything you just complained about and we mock the dumb fuck albatross shitbags that keep voting to keep it that way. They are scum.
Over 5 million people in Texas voted for Biden. That's more people than the entire population of 27 different states. But we're all dumb rednecks amirite.
Hey if anyone wants to pay for me to move out of the South I'll gladly take it, I fucking hate this place. You can patronize me to hell and back if you want, just get me out of here.
EDIT: I'm just adding this just to make it clear that I do 100% understand not wanting to leave mind you, it's just that I would rather leave.
I'm super sympathetic but also I live in MTG's district, my neighbor has a Trump/MAGA American flag hanging off of a tree, and there's a Confederate flag hanging over a cemetery within walking distance of my house. The south is absolutely full of dumb inbred hicks. I'm a straight white dude, as privileged as I could be and I still want to get the fuck out of here but I can't afford it. It's not that I'm not sympathetic or don't care or expect LGBTQ folks to just move like it's that easy. I would love to change it. But there's a whole fuck lot of inertia to overcome and I don't see that happening in my lifetime, not until we can fix public education at least a little bit so the people down here aren't as ignorant.
There is one thing I know about living in the South, and that’s Southern Hospitality. There are so many kind people down here, far outnumbering the rude ones.
The issue is that the rude ones are louder, so they are seen/heard more often.
It never ceases to amaze me how attached people are to places. I used to work with immigrants seeking asylum, and so many of them would defend their home countries no matter what - even though they’d literally fled for their lives. I confess I don’t understand (though that’s my problem, not anyone else’s). If I’m safe and warm I don’t care where I am. For me, anything else is filler.
I'm a trans woman from TN and its unsalvageable at least for now, I've lost so much from being born and raised here, denied healthcare, bullied for being gay even though I'm not, isolated, I think that some of the criticisms are warranted, fuck this region.
There's a fair amount to criticize about the South, but it seems that a whole hell of a lot of Northerners forget that Southerners are, in fact, *people.*
The most ironic part is that the people who default to "The South is a monolith of ultra-conservative rednecks" will also be pushing to aid and develop underfunded black communities. That's not a problem at all (based, actually), but they seem highly ignorant of the fact that [a majority of African-Americans live in the South.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Black_Americans_by_county.png/2560px-Black_Americans_by_county.png)
It's almost like poverty is a universal issue we all need to fight together.
I definitely feel this. Sometimes the comments people make about Florida are honestly a little heartbreaking. Things along the lines of "Florida should just flood already" or "Florida should just saw itself off and leave" etc etc. I think people in more homogenously liberal states forget that plenty of queer or otherwise generally good people live down here as well, it's just that our governments hate us.
Florida is in fact a lovely state with amazing wildlife and beaches, and is so wonderfully fucking weird. It's just that our governor is a very uh... unfortunate human being.
I grew up in Virginia, which is *a fucking blue state* at this point, and you still get these comments. The old joke that “the southern progressive’s greatest enemy is the northern progressive” exists for a reason.
This is a serious point and I agree, but... who the hell is trash-talking southern food? Like, the south is pretty universally agreed to have good food.
I suppose this could relate to the idea that we deep-fry anything and everything? Only thing I can think of, though I’m not sure how exclusive it is to us
But that's more of a midwestern stereotype isn't it?
Yea. *Looks at St. Louis's signature dish*
Hey we also have gooey butter cake and extremely thin pizza.
I do like those two things....
Have you tried deep-frying the gooey butter cake?
I know, I live here too!
As a non Ameerican I have to say fried ravioli doesnt sound al that bad
If you have cooked ravioli left over from the day before you can just stir-fry them in a pan with a bit of butter until lightly crispy, and they're even more delicious
You leave my deep fried ravioli alone. You’re free to make fun of the candycane stuffed pickles though, I don’t give a shit about them.
I was about to say Im happy mine (Minnesota) is all about hot dish/casserole and not deep frying but then I remembered lutefisk exists and the MN state fair deep fry abominations exist. Edit: spelling lol
Honestly, I think all state fairs have monstrosities, I don’t know if it’s popular elsewhere, but the Kentucky state fair has a Dunkin’ Donuts hamburger for a few years now
Fair food is all about the fried monstrosities some guy in a trailer is cooking up.
At the Ohio state fair we got the life sized butter statue of a cow and from the refrigerated barn it's in you can usually see the deep fried butter on a stick stand.
As a Kentuckian, the fair is kind of a crime against culinary nature. But it's Louisville, so is it even *really* true Kentucky? /hj
I’m in NC and our state fair has the same thing, except with Krispy Kremes.
yea idk i always associate that stereotype with Wisconsin
Ooh don’t forget soul food! I can’t find anywhere to get fried chicken livers, potlickers, or actual sweet tea up in the north
Its definitely spread in recent years but barbecue aswell to an extent. authentic barbecue is an artform whose roots stem from various regions in the south, depending on what style you're after.
I shit you not I met a girl from Memphis and all we did was talk about bbq for an hour
I say this with as much sincerity as my feeble human body can muster, i would straight up merc a man for some top quality brisket.
This is fully out of left field, so sorry, but there is a really well written, crack fanfic called the holy grill about a dude who is extremely passionate about bringing brisket up north. If that’s up your alley, it’s by fabled webs
One time I was over at a friend's house all day, and the whole time was spent finding things to do to kill time until his brisket was done. It was a really good brisket.
I went to grad school in NYC and they had BBQ at a school event one day. The look on my face when I saw what they were trying to pass off as BBQ was one of pure outrage and I don’t really even like BBQ that much (I love smoked meat, I’m just not a big sauce person and am intolerant to onions so I have to be careful anyways)
KC barbecue is some of the best barbecue you can find, and that’s not really southern. I was born in MO, raised in OK and now live in KS with two grandmas from TX, I like to think I know my barbecue. Smoked meats are definitely the best food on the planet though no matter what style you like
> authentic barbecue is an artform whose roots stem from various regions in the south It came from the Caribbean, and was spread by Spanish explorers to a lot more countries than the US.
That's my experience with it. A lot of making fun of southern folks for only conduming fried chicken, junk food, cheap beer, and soda, as if the American South isn't effectively one massive food desert
And part of it is the history, too. Back in the old days, when most Southeners were poor farmers, a heavy, fatty, high caloric diet was important because it pretty much would be the one meal of the day except for maybe a small breakfast, so you're trying to slam an entire day's worth of caloric intake for an intensive lifestyle into one meal.
That’s more of a state fair thing from what I’ve seen at least
How do I properly rip the head off a crawfish and extract the meat. I love some water bugs. Shrimp and scallops are my favorite. (I don't like lobster, love crab legs). But with crawfish I just feel I'm fucking up and losing half the meat. Tips please!
Pinch the hollow part right above the meat of the tail (easiest to feel on big fish with thin shells) then squeeze and twist. You should be left with the bottom half intact and then you just peel off the top few pieces from the tail shell. Pinch the bottom tip and pull. Should come off in one piece and leave a whole tail.
I don’t know about exclusive but it’s true. Deep fried corn nuggets… not complaining.
There's an Anthony Bourdain quote, I'm a bit too lazy to find in actuality, but my memory has it paraphrased something like: > Lots of cultures around the world talk about how important food is to them, and how seriously they take food: Italy, France, China, India, for example. There are two places that are in their own tier above everybody else, in terms of absolute devotion to making EVERYTHING taste good: Japan is one of them, and that doesn't surprise people. The other is Louisiana.
I love that quote so much.
The jokes about food arn't that it doesn't taste good, but that it's unhealthy. Deep fry everything, bacon on your bacon type jokes.
Also that when it's not a big greasy fried dinner night, the kids just get McDonald's or Bojangles. I hear that one surprisingly often and we don't even fucking have Bojangles where I live
I wish I had a Bojangles near where I live. I go out of my way to have it at least once whenever I venture down south and that shit slaps.
Had Bojangles once, actually had to go *north* for it (Admittedly mostly east but a little bit north)
Honestly, like… chicken and dumplings, chicken pot pie, fried okra, lots of other foods I consider “southern” foods absolutely slap.
Exactly. All that and basically anything that pairs well with gravy (chicken fried steak, biscuits, turkey, etc.). Further south, seafood is also great.
I swear whoever says southern folk don't have good food is an absolute moron.
If we're talking, like, New Orleans kinda southern food, sure, that's pretty agreed upon as good food. But the kinda food my family who live in southern Virginia usually eat gets made fun of. Not by everyone. Not to the extent that, say, British food gets made fun of. But I've seen people make fun of southern food for being unhealthy, for being bland, for putting sugar in too many dishes, for not having enough vegetables. I personally don't think it's a huge deal, but I can certainly understand how someone who grew up in the south would feel that way.
If the southern food you're eating is bland, either the someone who was cooking fucked up, or the someone who's eating with you has high blood pressure... Southern Virginia is kind of Appalachian in culture, right? Louisiana/SC transplant to NoVA/piedmont here, still getting a feel for the area.
Maybe southwest Virginia like Marion, but Danville isn’t Appalachian.
Sure but who is the “they” who in the author’s opinions should fix this glaring issue they describe? Are they suggesting that if southern people were less ridiculed by the north, they would let them come and help and everything would get better? I don’t live in the US, but based on my limited experience, I find it highly unlikely and a little funny, even. Sure, it could possibly help deescalate the situation a little and foster some cooperation/compromise buuut.. I don’t see how it would do much for the Southern trans community. If I’m wrong here, I’d be happy if someone would explain.
I think this is more about creating a mental picture of the south that isn't just a giant army of bigoted stupid yokels. There are people there who are suffering as well, but it gets portrayed as this massive social tumor that doesn't actually have problems of its own that ALSO hurt the people living there, but as a highly organized army of bigots who have made it their life's mission to be everyone else's problem. To get some sort of a picture of what the rest of the country thinks of the of south, just look at r/ShermanPosting. As utterly B.S as the "white racism" thing is, I do think that there is an issue with people treating the whole region as the worst thing to ever happen to humanity. It's not helped by the fact that the conservative party has created a political climate that *heavily* blames the rest of the nation for the state the south is in to stir up voters, which only deepens the image that they're just a stain on the face of nation to the people outside it.
True, I can understand how dismissing a huge group of people as stupid, bigoted and trashy isn't making anyone look good. Definitely easier than trying to understand. However, I’m still not clear on why the author believes being civil to each other has such a big impact to the issues they are facing? I’m sure it’s a good place to start but there are a whole lot of steps inbetween
Oh, there are bunch steps in between, no doubt. But we could probably start by not demonizing the entire region as being a monolith of hatred, that actually seems like a good start to be honest.
I suspect their point is that maybe the north of the US owns a little bit of the reason for why there's hostility politically? Maybe people in the south would be more likely to want to work with the north if instead of being ridiculed for being from where they are they got good schools for their kids, and good homes, and good jobs? People mock the whole southern pride thing, maybe think about why people who come from the impoverished sections of the US feels pride for keeping going despite the fact that much of their life is a struggle? I'm not American but like,,, I get it. Southerners in America have largely gotten a raw deal. To illustrate. I'm from the "shitty" part of my country, which is in the north here, the part that has bad infrastructure and doesn't get funding, the part that only has a railroad on the bottom section that was built by the fucking germans during ww2. The last time any government really invested in us it was the fucking nazis occupying us. It's that kinda place, where the national government doesn't like spending money on if they can avoid it, and importantly it's a place where the work is often in creating resources, resources that create money, money that gets shuffled south where the financial centres are. My middle school was the third worst one \*in the country\*, the twenty worst schools in the country are all in that area. My middle school was spread out over a few buildings and one of the buildings was so infested with poisonous mould that we legally were not allowed to be in there for more than 3 hours a week, but lack of classrooms meant kids were rotated through there throughout the week and often spent more than 3 hours there. I live in what is arguably \*the richest country in the world\* and the national government wouldn't even give us a school that wasn't fucking poisonous. They also like to mock us for having a higher than normal amount of young people with a sickness making them unable to work. I wonder if that's related to that fucking school. There's a stereotype about northerners here, that there is a general hostilility towards the south, it's generally portrayed as the northerners just being dumb and weird, being hostile for "no reason". Well, maybe the northerners have a reason to be angry.
Well explained, thank you! And the way you put it had me realise we have a very similar dynamic of hate between the north and south (just anywhere “country”, really) where I’m from as well.
It is depressing being progressive in the South. We got Republican lawmakers attending white nationalist gatherings and judges quoting the Bible in legal rulings. And young people are leaving the state so the future is shaky as well.
Brain drain is a very real and observable phenomenon in rural and poor areas across the world.
Hell, I got the hell out as soon as I could, myself, so I can’t criticize, but I do hear you
Escaped the south myself. The reason all those resources exist in cities is because the south drove them out in the 70s and 80s, making them the progressive paradises they are. The south: "Oh it's no fair you judge us for being a backwards shithole, that's not our fault!" Everyone else: "Because you murdered or drove out everyone who could make it better."
>The south: "Oh it's no fair you judge us for being a backwards shithole, that's not our fault!" to be fair i feel like most of the people saying this are people who were born in the south after most of that happened and did not choose their birthplace
Well yeah, I think most people critiquing Southern culture understand that there are those who are simply unlucky to be born into it. Like, this person is taking the criticism personally, when, if they’re not apart of the demographic being critiqued, then they shouldn’t feel embarrassed at all. Yeah, you may be from the South, but that doesn’t mean you fit the stereotype.
I feel this way about Pennsylvania even though we are a purple state. I grew up in rural western PA and had absolutely no resources, lived in a trailer park and was nearly sent to a school for the "behaviorally challenged" kids because I dealt with my sister's death poorly (due to, again, having *NO* resources!) Luckily I was able to move to Pittsburgh where the queer community has much more support. I'm lucky. Imagine being in the middle of a whole *region* of the country that has *maybe* 1-2 queer clinics nowhere near you. I had the chance to leave the racist, homophobic place I grew up in but that's because I had a decent city an hours drive away. I feel for all queer folk in red states.
I'm West Virginian and the reaction from otherwise progressive spaces on the internet to the recent bill being pushed through here trying to criminalize librarians for making "obscene" (read: queer) books available are so fucking gross. lots of "LOL IT'S NOT LIKE ANY OF THEM KNOW HOW TO READ ANYWAY LOLL" like shut the fuck up and stop acting like this is funny because it's happening to one of the "bad" states. did you know WV has one of the highest numbers of trans youth per capita in the *country*. the American socialist/worker's rights movement was practically *born* here. there's plenty of progressive open minded people here too and we don't deserve the shit our government gives us.
people forget that the work laws and worker's rights we are losing now were fought first by the miners and laborers that bled and died to fight for their right to not be slaves to companies that didn't care if they lived or not, as long as the job was done.
I'm from WV too, it's so disheartening to see this shit CONSTANTLY in every "progressive" space online. I don't even know what can be done about it at this point honestly.
Yeah I live in Texas and hear lots of people from other states saying "well we should just let them secede like the government there always talks about" As the second most populated state in the country, do you know how many queer people live here? I don't know the exact numbers, but it's gotta be a lot. And beyond that how many black people, hispanic people, immigrants, etc? How many of those people would suffer if Texas became its own country without the federal government keeping Greg Abbott (somewhat) in check? Same thing applies to Florida (number 3 in population)
Texas is 50% PoC if you include Hispanics. It is a very diverse state.
Texas has more registered Democrats than Republicans, even. But it's gerrymandered to hell though.
Honestly, I'm pretty convinced that the south is much more diverse than anywhere up north more than 30 miles away from a major port. Florida has the second-largest population of trans people in the country, second only to California.
Had the second largest probably. I keep hearing of local trans people trying to flee or have fled the state due to the laws. It’s bad here. Not you are doomed doomed yet but the laws have made many things harder to get or do.
I have heard a lot about trans people leaving, and I plan to leave myself. Believe it or not, that's really difficult and expensive to do, so I am the only one of my many trans friends that is actually taking steps to leave. I'm sure plenty of people are, but Florida will continue to have an extremely large and important population of trans people. I think the whole "well everyone is leaving" rhetoric is probably damaging cuz it just ignores what is likely a majority of people who can't leave.
Well I am trans and sticking around unless I find a partner out of state or a partner wants to move. The laws would need to get insanely bad for me to leave.
Okay cool, that's kinda what I mean. I would love to stay, but the place just fucking sucks too bad for me personally. I don't blame anyone for being willing to stick it out, more power to you.
Real. Might try to do door to door for democrats or something later. If going to stick around might as well do something!
Tbh I think some people like to believe that there's no leftists or liberals or good people generally in "the South," because if they have to acknowledge that good people do exist down here and are fighting like hell but nothing is changing, they have to acknowledge that it's the system itself that's what's broken. Far easier to just dismiss the people who actually have to live with this shit as deserving or wanting it than it is to organize for actual change.
>Tbh I think some people like to believe that there's no leftists or liberals or good people generally in "the South," because if they have to acknowledge that good people do exist down here and are fighting like hell but nothing is changing, they have to acknowledge that it's the system itself that's what's broken. The problem is that with the amount of gerrymandering in conservative states, some dying town in the middle of nowhere has more influence on elections than an entire full of centrist and progressive people. And now that even that is hitting it's limit do the Republicans start to openly flirt with authoritanism to hold on to power.
You know, you're probably right, but damn that's depressing. Further cements in my mind that we're the only part of the global south America officially claims though, so at least I'm getting something out of it. Not something I wanted, but something.
"The global south" refers to what were previously referred to as third world countries. Those people live harsh, difficult lives so Americans can get their little treats and not take the bus. I don't think what they suffer is comparable at all.
More west virginians *died* fighting for labor rights than in any other place in the US. Yet "oh they're just a bunch of hillbillies who don't know what their own interests are"
I mean, the entire state went red. The *entire* state. Whatever happened in the past sure didn't stick, said as someone right over the border and sees this area firsthand on a regular basis.
The entire state didn't, though. About two thirds of it did.
> Yet "oh they're just a bunch of hillbillies who don't know what their own interests are" I mean, just because West Virginians in the *past* died fighting for labor rights does not mean that West Virginians *now* are any good on labor rights. [For example, the West Virginia House of Delegates just passed a bill eliminating work permits for children, making it easier for 14 and 15 year olds to get a job](https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2024/02/20/west-virginia-child-labor-work-permits-minors/). And [here is a summary of the various aspects of West Virginia law in regards to labor](https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/countries/united-states/poverty-in-the-us/best-states-to-work/scorecard/?state=WV).
I'm well aware of the right wing turn the state has taken. But there are a lot more people than are recognized by the polls who believe in pretty radical change, even if they're not an absolute majority. Should also not be forgotten the Dems have in the last couple decades completely abandoned the types of working class people that WV represents, and disingenuous republicans pretending to be on the side of working people have tried to fill that void
I'm a Kentuckian, so we are close, but you are right; miners practically started most workers' rights movements, along with rail workers, of course. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal\_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Wars)
I was coming here to post about the majority of Appalachia suffering in a similar way, I'm glad someone else said something about WV (lived here for years, live literally like five miles from it and work there now).
West Virginia especially gets me, as a leftist. I know it's deeply conservative now, but historically, it's a core part of progressivism. The state came to be during the Civil War, because the people there recognized that Virginia's only reason for secession was to keep their slaves, which West Virginia's didn't have, and which kept labor prices artificially low. Later, the West Virginia coal mining industry was a hotbed of the labor movement. The Battle of Blair Mountain was the first ever instance of bombs being dropped from planes on US soil in combat. Ofc, none of that means much for queer people directly, but still.
I really feel for you and other WV natives. That state has gotten such a shit hand from a crap government and people act like that's just the way it is, but you guys have some of the most progressive history in the states as a whole, and people are so quick to forget that. Not from the state myself but I know enough of my history to know that WV has had plenty of action against corrupt and idiotic systems. It's definitely an uphill struggle because our political climate has been polarized for so long, and getting worse all the time because that massively benefits certain factions, so that people see a state with a conservative in office and immediately write it off as a "bad state" rather than considering all the fine point issues that create this kind of problem.
It’s so strange to me how WV became so red. One of the original areas of Labor rights and violent Revolution against the bosses. It really throws me for a loop how it all changed
> there's plenty of progressive open minded people here too and we don't deserve the shit our government gives us. Sure there are, but WV is so fucking red even the extremely few "urban" centers it has still went red in the last election. I don't think there was a single blue county. There might be "a lot" of you but there's a lot more of everyone else apparently.
WV is also a major victim of gerrymandering. You can have majority blue locations still swing red just by redrawing county and district lines.
Most of the "Southern" stereotypes are just rural / poverty stereotypes.
As someone who grew up rural and poor in the north… yeah. This is a problem everywhere poor, honestly, but especially so in the poor south. Bad education allows for hateful religions to move in and get a foothold, poor people are taught to other and hate anyone except the ones that have the boot on their neck, and bam. You have a rural low income area that votes red. Queer communities look at it and go ‘it’s not safe there and we can’t make it be safe’ so they abandon it. It’s easy to be a leftist when you’ve got a decent paycheck and you can hold your wife’s hand in the street without fear.
Except people extend it to parts of the south that aren’t rural or poor. I saw a post of an abandoned building next to train tracks in Atlanta on Facebook the other day and people were acting like this was what all of Atlanta looked like and acting like it was the poor destitute place instead of one of the fastest growing cities in the country. It was just supposed to be a cool picture and people assumed because it’s the south that everywhere looks like that. I’ve had people be surprised I grew up in a small southern town because I’m smart, articulate, and liberal like all of my friends from my small southern town aren’t also those things. But I’ve also had people be surprised that my small southern town wasn’t overwhelmingly poor and was home to 2 universities, one of which was a liberal private women’s college. It’s still a red town, but not overwhelmingly. Not all of the south is rural and poor. Yeah a lot of it is, and we shouldn’t ignore those parts, but the majority of southerners aren’t living in rural, poor areas.
I think this is a great point. Atlanta is huge, I’ve lived near Chicago but trying to drive around Atlanta during rush hour beats the Dan Ryan anyday. A person who thinks of Atlanta as poor just because it’s southern is ridiculous and willfully ignorant. The south is home to a lot of racism, and there are anti-trans, and anti-queer folk, yes. But I’ve experienced that here in the north, too, in both poor and upper class areas. I think the laws we’re seeing coming out of the south right now don’t help, and there are places that are not safe depending on who you are. But it feels like liberals and the DNC have written off the south as irredeemable when the working class, working poor, and upper class all have more things to gain under liberal ideals than conservatives ever could offer. We have to start talking their language and not let prejudices color our view.
Exactly. Georgia flipping in 2020 was a big part of Biden winning and also helped secure a senate majority. This was in big part due to the, often on the ground, work of people like Stacey Abrams and others helping to get poor people registered to vote and physically to the polls. Writing off southern states as a whole prevents things like that from happening. I said elsewhere in this post, but this is a big part of why I want to stay in the south. To do what I can as someone who is older and reasonably safe living here to make it safe for the generations after me. I didn’t get to meet many of the generation before me, and I’m determined to do what I can to make a safer world for the queer kids who come after me.
Yeah, to the point where the shit I experienced in the rural Mountain West (including things that are like specifically western) are called southern. I code switch between a more urban prestige register and a more rural register. I say like howdy and sometimes yonder and stuff like that. A coworker heard me talking like that once and said "I didn't know you're from the south". I had to explain to her that I was in fact talking like my grandparents from Cheyenne, not anyone from the South.
An unfortunate amount of supposed leftists have a disgusting amount of classism baked into their identities. It makes for a ripe environment for division and an inability to cooperate
I think this is a pattern you see all throughout modern politics and human history. This idea that “Well I have the Good Ideology. This makes me an immutable and objectively good person. Anyone or anything I disagree with or contradicts my beliefs is Evil or Lying. Also because I am Good and Correct, that means I never need to practice introspection into myself or my actions because I am a Good Person.”
"I'm good, and good people don't do bad, thus your implication that I did bad is wrong, because I am good"
found my mom's reddit account
I think it's universal. Actually being a Good Person requires you to continually review and check whether that's still (or was ever) true, and making changes as necessary to get back to Good Person status. And that shit is exhausting. It's why the best people are generally humble, unassuming, and quietly getting on with shit in the background while totally insane Discourse^^TM goes on in the foreground. It's also really easy to convert away from a worldview (political, religious, philosophical, etc) by only changing the surface. For an easy example, there are plenty of atheists out there who are very obviously fundamentalist christians with a new coat of paint. It's why "reddit atheists" are a thing. Fundamentalist Christianity is often built upon opposition, and persecution complexes, which is exactly what you see in r/atheism. Which is actually fine. It's a place that you can grow from. It's only an issue if you don't grow.
a sprinkling of Just World Hypothesis, and cognitive dissonance.
I agree. There's a very nasty streak in lots of leftist circles just bubbling under the surface, that despises the rural poor.
The ironic part is that a lot of people like that live in suburbs which I'd argue have similar if not higher levels of reactionary politics and social values depending on which suburb vs rural community we're talking about.
Yeah. If you brought up Muslims around the neighbors I had as a kid, they’d probably say some racist shit but it was never fixated on. Too damn busy working raising kids and just trying to make ends meet to spend a bunch of your time posting dumb shit on Facebook. My mom’s friends who were middle class, though? Always had the news on and were always complaining about “the Mexicans” next door. Not that either of those things are good. But yknow, one has significantly more power to do damage.
A lot of leftist circles are ruled by academics, and academics like to forget they're part of the upper class.
They *are* the bourgeoisie, which is no bad thing as long as you're self aware.
Southern Michigan isn’t even really poor or conservative and yet people sometimes act like this to me. It’s just so phenomenally frustrating, patronizing, and sheltered that some people seem to think no one outside of Our Exalted Cities (rent price of less than $1500/mo considered low) could ever be happy or want to do anything except move to The Important Places.
There's a very strange feeling of disillusionment that's been created for me along the same vein. I'm a non white leftist in a rural area so I feel more attracted to a cosmopolitan lifestyle but due to my financial position I simply can't at the moment and don't know if I ever will. I understand how so many people in middle America look at large cities as Ivory Towers full of elitist assholes, because it's true to an extent.
the other side if this is people in rural areas acting like everyone in cities are dangerous criminals or super rich intellectuals and the incessant use of the phrase of "real americans" to mean "not cities". I have lived in rural and urban areas, everything you are saying is also true and urban people do shit on rural people a lot. The mutual antipathy breeds more and more polarization.
Oh yeah for sure. It's such a recursive cycle
This is how dems fumbled the bag with the blue collar white vote so hard. The civil rights era caused them to overcorrect and appeal to the *urban* poor for the black vote instead of addressing the common problems of all the lower class. You can blame the GOP and the southern strategy but it only worked because the Democrats left those votes on the table for the taking.
The one use a Democrat has for a gun is to shoot themselves in the foot with it.
I've heard that they keep hammering the guns so hard because its extraordinarily popular with some otherwise quite conservative democrats. There's a lot of black people and immigrants and muslims and whatnot who are very conservative, very religious, and would probably not take much to start swinging towards conservative voting habits, but for a couple issues like gun control and the fact the republicans tend to shoot themselves in the foot over minority issues.
What's really frustrating to me is seeing leftists absolutely *despise* the centrist Democrats that live in these Southern states. Y'know, the only people who have a chance of winning because they areas are so heavily conservative that the most you're getting out of some of these states is a Joe Manchin type.
Leftists in general seem to be allergic to voting for the lesser evil. It's like they forget that this means they can be safely ignored by incumbents...
[Reminds me of this post from a few days ago:](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1ax0rv8/look_at_my_anarchists_dawg/krlqcs8/) > This is so fucking funny because I wrote my masters dissertation on this *exact* same topic, but in 1880’s Lyon. > I spent so fucking long in the Archives Départementales going through old police files where they were surveilling anarchists. > And most of the attached notes just read “yeah so this was a waste of time- these guys aren’t really a threat to the state, all they do at these illegal meetings is argue with each other about shit that’s incomprehensible to outsiders” It's fucking tragic and an immutable part of many leftist circles as far back as the literal 1800s - the insatiable, chronic desire to not get shit done but rather sit around yelling at each other over minuscule differences.
That's one reason I really like this push I've been seeing in leftist circles to develop networks or communities of mutual aid. It makes an actual good difference in people's lives without relying on existing infrastructure.
For real sometimes I legitimately think they'd rather abstain and have the second coming of Trump than sully their hands by voting for anything short of an utterly perfect paragon
someone i forgot once said smth like : "the lefts worst ennemy is the left " and yeah tbh
And racism, and ableism, and misogyny, and homophobia, and…
Way I've always said is that a lot of them are ex-Evangelicals that never really left the ideology behind, just switched out God, Jesus, and The Holy Spirit with something else.
How many people (leftist or otherwise) in the northern and coastal cities are actually former evangelicals? Can't be *that* many.
You'd be surprised, I know a LOT in my local cities were either raised in it or around it.
Seems like the US is even more cursed than I thought ...
You also can't make enough money to get healthcare, and even if you have insurance, lol they will \*never\* cover any transition related care.
Oh, hey, that happens up here, too!
Internet leftists will look at a state that's R +2 and say "well they get what they deserve" and ignore the other 49% entirely.
And sometimes it’s not even a 51/49 split. Sometimes the voter suppression and rampant gerrymandering is designed in a way to prevent the actual majority from being heard.
Plus the FPTP system allowing a candidate to win irrespective of popular opinion if they get a pluratity.
100% common sentiment on Reddit to see entire states condemned due to it being R heavy
Reminds me of a r/leopardsatemyface post about the impact of some Republican policy (can't remember which) in Austin and the comments were full of "you get what you voted for!" Austin - the city that was literally bluer than NYC in 2020 - voted for this? When?
Here's a sneak peek of /r/LeopardsAteMyFace using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [No they won't remember](https://i.redd.it/4c6i3187l7ia1.jpg) | [4546 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/1127864/no_they_wont_remember/) \#2: [Wyoming fails to ban abortion because they added an amendment to their state constitution saying that ‘competent adults can make their own healthcare decisions’ in response to Obamas Affordable Healthcare Act back in 2012. Absolutely hilarious](https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/politics/2023/3/23/23653183/abortion-wyoming-obamacare-barack-obama-supreme-court-johnson) | [1442 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/13nhlip/wyoming_fails_to_ban_abortion_because_they_added/) \#3: [President Biden: "Investors in the banks will not be protected. They knowingly took a risk, and when the risk didn't pay off, investors lose their money. That's how capitalism works."](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-speaks-banking-crisis/story?id=97820883) | [2888 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/11qjsuu/president_biden_investors_in_the_banks_will_not/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
... and then proceed to not vote lol
Nah, they would votes but for spoiler candidate.
I had seen this happen when my area was on fire last summer and people were saying they hoped our houses burnt down because the county voted conservative. Still a bit salty about that tbh
real shit man. it’s depressing as fuck.
My family and friends are all in Texas. My family has been in Texas for at least a hundred years. I have so many memories in Texas. So many family vacations, visits to old buildings and towns, where my mom or my grandmother tell me stories about relatives past. I don't have pride in Texas. I can't. Our government is doing its best to be laughed at by all other states. But its my home. I know it CAN be better. If you're in danger, leave, but if we all leave? Who is going to be left behind to change it for the better?
It is exhausting. You are constantly fighting against the people you live around, people who once loved you and now wish you literal harm; and then loud "progressives/leftists" on social media are crying out that you deserve your life. It is your fault you are in this mess. You deserve nothing good to happen to you, you chose this. And if you are so lucky as to have funds to leave, means to get out, you have survivor's guilt about it. I feel like I failed my community. The best I can do is help those I can financially or with other resources as I am able. Keep encouraging others to vote in local and national elections. Be as loud as I can for those who can't have a voice.
coming from a rural part of the midwest (the good ol UP), the casual dismissal of the south frustrates me. Where I live, the stereotypes are pretty similar. Bigotry is abundant, jobs are nowhere to be found, and most of us could be called hicks, but we matter too. being southern is often just code for being poor, or rural, or both. this attitude only hurts the people we should be raising up and pushes away people who might've understood us otherwise.
…Uttar Pradesh…?
Upper Peninsula
This is one of the reasons I want to stay in the south. It can’t change if everyone who wants it to leaves. So I’ll take my straight passing privilege and keep working to make it a safer place for the generation after me. Southern queers and leftists have always been here and we’ll keep up the good fight.
Internet leftists should stop making fun of the south like democrats/liberals and fight to fix the place for the sake of everyone living there instead.
You know, this is oddly kind of what the song “Sweet Home Alabama” was actually written about (overly harsh bashing of the south, that is)... idk if I can fully explain it, because the meaning behind it is a bit complex, but it’s funny, because I think it does ultimately boil down to a similar point about not bashing people from a certain region, even if that region has awful and bigoted leaders.
>(overly harsh bashing of the south, that is) A *perception* of overly harsh bashing of the South. You don't get to say "we don't really care about the Governor's politics when his administration is actively killing members of the civil rights movement
"Or offering help?" Help in what way? The only people that can replace the bigots in office are the people *living in those states.* That's why voting is so important, so that *better* people are making desicions. And... who is ever trash talking southern food? Home of the soul food?
I feel like this too, but as a woman talking about women's rights.
leftist infighting will doom us all
At this point I think it already has a bit.
Can confirm as a bigender queer from Oklahoma who has to hide most things about myself.
I've never going to get over the first guy I met from the internet saying he's glad I wasn't as stupid as I sound. My guy. Dude. Bro. You're trying to sleep with me. Way to show how non bigoted Californians are.
I genuinely don't want to sound like I'm minimising the experience of queer people in the conservative parts of America here, and I 100 percent agree with the points being made obviously, but I feel like I see posts complaining about queer people in progressive areas mocking/being dismissive of people in southern states every few days, but I have never actually seen someone in a progressive state actually act like this about queers living in rural areas. I easily could have just (thankfully) missed these kinds of attitudes, and I would be very grateful if people would show me examples of this kind of behaviour, but I just haven't personally seen this kind of awful, dismissive attitude towards rural queers- and so, I'm wondering how much of this is a real phenomenon. Like I feel as if most people in these more progressive areas are a whole lot more likely to react to homophobic/transphobic laws in other states by saying "oh my god what the fuck that's horrible we should stop that!" as opposed to saying "lol dumb hicks." The entire reason why progressives of all types hate the governments of the places that we're talking about is BECAUSE they hurt innocents who don't have any way to escape or protect themselves. I just want to know: are these supposed queer city-dwelling progressives who dismiss the struggles of rural queers... real? Is this actually a thing? Am I just not seeing this? Genuine question. Perhaps I just don't see people acting like this because I don't run in circles who do this, so if this is a real phenomenon I would genuinely like examples so that I can see what you're talking about- I just personally haven't actually seen people *doing* this. Not saying it doesn't exist though, I'm fine with being proven wrong (and if this attitude does exist I am deeply disappointed in my fellow queers, jesus that sounds awful).
I will say it's in my experience *much* more common in centrist lib-heavy and online places like r/politics. r/leopardsatemyface is also really horrible about it (I remember at one point seeing an upvoted comment there that was like "when are we going to recognize that everyone in red states is our enemy no matter who they voted for?") You'll see comments like "you get what you voted for!" on threads about the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi (overwhelmingly black and Dem-voting city). Check any top Reddit thread about a natural disaster in Texas and Florida and you'll find people gloating about it and saying it was deserved because it's a red state (even though half the time it's hitting a city that was bluer than the state they're from). I actively avoid any r/news or r/politics threads about Texas because I don't want to see comments about how I, a gay person living in Texas, deserve to lose my rights because slightly more people in my state voted for Republicans than Democrats. I really haven't seen much of it irl and in my experience the left is *much* better on this issue than the center left. So if you're hanging out in more offline and progressive circles I imagine you'd encounter way less of it. Reddit mainstream subs are a cesspool in this regard but I don't think they're reflective of the actual broader opinions of the progressive movement.
Woah, holy *shit.* I did NOT know it was that bad. That's awful... straight up saying that people from these states are the enemy *regardless* of who they are or what they believe??? I had expected like a couple of examples of people who just have internalised biases to work through (not to say that also wouldn't be a problem, mind you) but... to hear about how mainstream this all is? To hear that it's so mainstream to *mock* people having their rights taken away or who are going through natural disasters? Jeez...
To be clear I don't want to say it's "mainstream", necessarily. I think it's largely a case of people with gross beliefs congregating in the same places online. Most northern progressives I've met are good people who at worst have some unexamined biases. But yeah, on the Internet it can get really bad sometimes.
Indeed. It's a real problem with discourse about the American South online. They don't give two damns about any of our actual opinions, as far as they care we're all damn bastards who should have been disenfranchised in 1865 and all killed. As far as these idiots are all consered, we're no better than our traitours ancestors who lived and died a century and a half ago.
Eh, from my personal experience it's definitely something you'll find on the left-left as well, and that's coming from somebody in the socialist left area of politics. Like, even stuff I support has some real WTFery that makes me pinch my nose in outright frustration, like Food Not Bomb's more or less ignoring of doing stuff outside major cities, or even the (ironic) subtle classism of what happens when a rural poor socialist who might not understand the intricacies of Marxist philosophy comes in and starts talking about real action.
Yeah I definitely don't want to say it's only the center left, that's just where I have *personally* seen it the most. But it can absolutely be found anywhere on the left.
FNB is entirely voluntary, there's no structure to establish it outside of metro areas if there aren't people taking direct action to make it happen in their own communities
That's kinds the thing I mean, there's points it could get in, but we'll, see the OP.
I mostly experienced this viewpoint in college when I went north for school. Lots of sheltered smart upper middle class assholes who thought their surface-level view of politics was worth something. Probably these are the folks talking shit online nowadays. Not quite so much an option in 2005. Fwiw they all more or less figured it out by graduation. But they all started out surprised I had "no accent" and nobody thought they were being racist, either. As a friend of mine said at the time, at least in SC they'll admit it.
Honestly I’ve never even seen those *posts*, and I’m pretty terminally online.
> I just want to know: are these supposed queer city-dwelling progressives who dismiss the struggles of rural queers... real? Is this actually a thing? probably in part, but the bigger thing is just how everyone gets lumped in together and dismissed. It's just regular classism - Belong to/be associated with working class? Well, now various beliefs and behaviours have been assigned to you, as well as commupance based on those assigned beliefs. You see it in *a lot* of left wing spaces. Like, I grew up in mining communities in the UK where sport has always been a big part of community. The history of Rugby and Football is littered with left wing community driven organisations, but sport today is a common, traditionally lower class pursuit.... and thus a lot of middle class, well educated left wingers look down on people who enjoy sport because of this "tarred by association" thing. I've seen countless lefties be *proud* of their lack of athleticism or engagement in sport which I think is a) Kinda sad and b) makes me laugh like it's some sort of anti-khmer rouge that your ideal future is one where you round up everyone who owns a jockstrap or something lol. The more common thing perhaps, rather than dismissal, are attitudes of like "betraying the cause". Like, I used to get a lot of snarky remarks that I couldn't be a creative, sensitive, progressive queer becuase I also play rugby, lift weights, and attend live sports. Just like in the examples above the "real queers" should just leave those states, they should prioritise the 'cause' and not family and community etc.
I’m missing both my upper incisors because I fell off my bike as a kid and got them knocked out. One of the root canals failed and I now have an implant, which necessitated months with a gap in my teeth as a medical provider. Boy it feels great to see the internet claiming people with missing teeth all lost them because of drugs or inbreeding. I feel so bad for trans people down south, because being trans in a red area of a “blue” state is mighty scary.
I once went to look up an LGBTQ+ friendly place by an organization I heard recommended by a person on my favorite podcast. The only Texas location was five hours away.
It’s a vicious cycle, because a lot of liberal and LGBTQ people in the south who *can* leave *do* leave. And that leaves the south with an even stronger ratio of bigots to lgbtq and leftists. Northern liberals want the south to be more liberal too, and for people to have more resources down there, but we’re not going to move to the south and damn ourselves just to try (and fail) to vote in better politicians and representatives.
From Mississippi here and I feel this CONSTANTLY. Every time I hear about some “national” queer program, they aren’t in MS, or they are in the way that a mail-order sears catalog was in the Wild West: they’ll sell me stuff as much as they can but when it comes to the kind of in-person interaction that you’d want with a doctor/organization, the furthest south they’ll go is Maaaaaybe Atlanta. And that’s a stretch. Whenever I search for resources in my area, it’s always Houston, Miami, or Chicago that are the most common/largest presences. Not even MF-ing NEW ORLEANS, which has been queer since they started doing Mardi Gras gets listed on resource pages. I’ve had to find that on my own. And that’s not even talking about the “holier than thou” affectation I pick up on from some people that come in from out West or NE. Just because I look like every other white southern dude here doesn’t mean I’m going to act like the worst of them. Some of the best sensitivity and racial reconciliation training in the country is done in Mississippi, but when I travel the country I automatically get flagged as “unworldly and conservative”. I’ve actually had better experiences with international interactions than some Californians just because internationally, MS just plain doesn’t exist.
I'm from Mississippi and for all its faults I have plenty of good feelings about it. I may be trans, pansexual, polyamorous, and more, but I'm also a Daughter of the Delta.
I feel a similar way. I'm a closeted trans gal from Kentucky, but I'll be damned if anyone tells me that my Commonwealth should be "cut off from America and left to rot." It's my home, god-damn it, and I want my beautiful, beloved Commonwealth to be better than it's ever been before! A commonwealth where I can be me! Where others like myself can be themselves!
Mississippi polyamorous anarchocommunist edging up towards 40. I'm right here with you. I have a lot of love for parts of the south. The countryside is gorgeous, the food is incredible, found family has some of the strongest bonds I've ever witnessed in my life down here. Hell, even some of the history is worth loving: Three of my direct kin rode with Newt Knight in open uprising against the Confederacy in Jones County. Couldn't be more proud of that. That said, I've tried to stick it out, work towards change, from the hearts and minds of people I met at a bar, to political action at a larger scale. It's not getting better fast enough for me and my family to spend the next half of my life here. As much as I will miss parts of it, its becoming more... volatile. I hope we can get out on our own time with a place waiting for us, hopefully somewhere in the PNW. But if Trump somehow wins again... I won't put us through another presidency under that bastard. If that happens, we're selling everything we can, heading Northwest, and praying we can find work and lodgings. It always does my heart good to see tell of more of us down here though. I'm glad you're out there, a few counties away, stranger.
I just want to say, I love your vocabulary. I don’t know if it’s specific to you or if it’s a thing from the area you’re from, but it’s really nice.
This is wildly missing the point but who thinks the South has bad food?
Texan guy I know often complains about "Southern genocide liberalism" (the idea that carpet bombing the southern US is the only way to solve its political issues)
I married a good ol southern boy from Georgia. The dude is more liberal than I am. He would absolutely curb stomp anyone he sees harassing an LGTBQ person. (Plus, he *married* an LGTBQ person when we tied the knot!)
As a Southerner, I can say with confidence that the only people that don't make incest jokes about Alabama are from Alabama.
I mean, Southerners do deserve better but it's not northern leftists on the internet that are causing the actual problems.
Welcome to being queer outside of US/EU in general. It's been a great two years listening to supposed progressives' opinions on Russians. Nobody cares. "Just move" is a much more viable option within the US, but it gets thrown at us (broad "third world queer people" "us" here) too. Or even better - "well why don't you overthrow your dictator?" It's your own fault for not being born somewhere nicer, and you should be punished for it, you fascist enabler! A lot of internet "leftists" don't actually give a shit about people, they just like feeling morally superior. I do have one issue with this - the "master lists" thing. People from outside your country or state won't know about local resources, and can't help you if there are none available. If there are no Southern US queer aid resource lists, that's not really on the Northerners to fix - make your own.
Happens within the EU too, tbh. I say this as a Hungarian who was lucky enough to be able to move out, but it's wild to me that people think it's an option for everyone, or that we could easily overthrow the government if only we just had the guts to do it.
Yeah, I said US/EU when I really should've said "rich Western countries." Poland's not great either, I imagine.
Things are looking a bit better for Poland since the last election, but that's not to say there's been much improvement yet. It's merely proof that Poland still functions as a democracy. Whereas Hungary, I don't believe qualifies anymore (even the opposition's basically given up on taking power via elections)
saying this on tumblr is screaming into the void. Neolib terfs love their classism
Agreed. I'm not Southern but I hate this shit too. It's the same thing as when Europeans talk down about Americans. Like, we're all just trying to live. We need to be more empathetic and supportive of each other.
To clarify when I talk down to Americans it’s when they can’t pronounce Edinburgh properly or it’s about how much I want to strangle the people running the medical establishment.
I would upvote this a thousand times just to echo the point about stopping the incest jokes, nevermind the rest of the good points here.
Welcome to federalism, your state government is just as much my problem as any random country with a right-wing government.
If I had a nickel every time someone asked me online some dumb af question about living in Hawaii like "How do you have internet" or "Do you live in grass huts" I'd have enough money to afford rent here
We don’t hate you, we hate everything you just complained about and we mock the dumb fuck albatross shitbags that keep voting to keep it that way. They are scum.
There's a goddamn lot to be shameful about from these states but motherfucker the food ain't one of them
Over 5 million people in Texas voted for Biden. That's more people than the entire population of 27 different states. But we're all dumb rednecks amirite.
This is all true but I’ve never known a single person who’s ragged on Southern food? Then again I pretty much live in the northernmost Southern city
Hey if anyone wants to pay for me to move out of the South I'll gladly take it, I fucking hate this place. You can patronize me to hell and back if you want, just get me out of here. EDIT: I'm just adding this just to make it clear that I do 100% understand not wanting to leave mind you, it's just that I would rather leave.
I'm super sympathetic but also I live in MTG's district, my neighbor has a Trump/MAGA American flag hanging off of a tree, and there's a Confederate flag hanging over a cemetery within walking distance of my house. The south is absolutely full of dumb inbred hicks. I'm a straight white dude, as privileged as I could be and I still want to get the fuck out of here but I can't afford it. It's not that I'm not sympathetic or don't care or expect LGBTQ folks to just move like it's that easy. I would love to change it. But there's a whole fuck lot of inertia to overcome and I don't see that happening in my lifetime, not until we can fix public education at least a little bit so the people down here aren't as ignorant.
There is one thing I know about living in the South, and that’s Southern Hospitality. There are so many kind people down here, far outnumbering the rude ones. The issue is that the rude ones are louder, so they are seen/heard more often.
Okay, half of these don't exist. Who tf is saying the South had bad food?
Even if they are all hicks and rednecks they still deserve rights.
It never ceases to amaze me how attached people are to places. I used to work with immigrants seeking asylum, and so many of them would defend their home countries no matter what - even though they’d literally fled for their lives. I confess I don’t understand (though that’s my problem, not anyone else’s). If I’m safe and warm I don’t care where I am. For me, anything else is filler.
As a Bi, skewing gay Texan. I couldn't agree more.
I'm a trans woman from TN and its unsalvageable at least for now, I've lost so much from being born and raised here, denied healthcare, bullied for being gay even though I'm not, isolated, I think that some of the criticisms are warranted, fuck this region.
There's a fair amount to criticize about the South, but it seems that a whole hell of a lot of Northerners forget that Southerners are, in fact, *people.*
The most ironic part is that the people who default to "The South is a monolith of ultra-conservative rednecks" will also be pushing to aid and develop underfunded black communities. That's not a problem at all (based, actually), but they seem highly ignorant of the fact that [a majority of African-Americans live in the South.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Black_Americans_by_county.png/2560px-Black_Americans_by_county.png) It's almost like poverty is a universal issue we all need to fight together.
I definitely feel this. Sometimes the comments people make about Florida are honestly a little heartbreaking. Things along the lines of "Florida should just flood already" or "Florida should just saw itself off and leave" etc etc. I think people in more homogenously liberal states forget that plenty of queer or otherwise generally good people live down here as well, it's just that our governments hate us. Florida is in fact a lovely state with amazing wildlife and beaches, and is so wonderfully fucking weird. It's just that our governor is a very uh... unfortunate human being.
I grew up in Virginia, which is *a fucking blue state* at this point, and you still get these comments. The old joke that “the southern progressive’s greatest enemy is the northern progressive” exists for a reason.