One does wonder, the benefits as enumerated by @puzzlegal duly noted, if the bigger psychological satisfaction is not based on who else is included, but on who else is excluded…
I love the Dope.
I wasn’t necessarily accepted graciously.
In fact, I was told “get the hell out of here”.
But, I hung in.
There’s a mean, hateful hazing that noobs go through.
I fear the effect is we’ve ran off a few of the more diverse, the few that couldn’t take the hate speech and bullying that goes on.
That has created a huge hole. And a clique -y vibe.
If you’re not in, you’re out.
That’s the danger of being part of a group.
If you get in, and don’t conform, you’re out, on your ear.
For some things, yes. One of the advantages of hanging out with Jews is you can be reasonably sure there aren’t many virulent anti-semites in the room. That gives a certain sense of safety.
Fwiw, i don’t feel that need on an online message board, and would prefer to have more diversity of viewpoints here.
Do you feel unsafe based on fear of virulent anti-semites “in the room” in general public spaces and interactions?
I know they are there but I honestly haven’t felt threatened on a personal level by that knowledge since a physical fight back in college.
Not very often. But people who will make trans people uncomfortable are pretty common, as are people who don’t react well to neurodiverse people.
And there are lots of little things. When i go to a gay dance event, the default is that which part you dance isn’t correlated to your sex. You don’t have to constantly explain yourself. There’s a near-absence of micro-aggressions against queer people which is refreshing. No one looks funny at the pair of guys holding hands, and no one will be offended if someone of their sex hits on them. (I’ve only once been hit on by a woman outside of explicitly queer spaces. I’ve been hit on by women a lot in queer spaces. The space makes it safe. The absence of people who would be offended makes it safe.)
Even for Jews there are little things like that. You don’t have to explain that you don’t want to go to a cookout on Yom Kippur. No one looks at you funny if you wear a kippah. People will understand that you really care whether there’s any milk products in that food. This doesn’t matter much for a mostly-secular Jew like me, but it’s a big deal for more observant Jews.
Also, weren’t you the person talking about antisemitism on college campuses? I spend a lot of time on college campuses, walked past a pro-Palestinian encampment weekly, and had friends supporting that movement. I never felt unsafe. I’m also not much of a supporter of Israel. But i was guarded about expressing pro-israel sentiments. I would think you’d be sympathetic of the idea of excluding those who aren’t comfortable with you, though.
I was a person discussing it, specifically my daughter’s experience. That experience is not however being fearful in a room of non Jews. I of course know the anti-semitism is there on any case. It is not however like I am worried of being attacked like some trans people may justifiably be in some spaces, or even the less physical aggressions like intentionally misgendering.
But don’t you see the value of knowing you are in a space where that won’t happen? Blatant antisemitism is pretty rare, so it’s not that big a deal for Jews. But it’s a bigger deal for queer people and the neurodiverse.
I agree that generally speaking, people are social creatures and as a result, want to be part of something larger than themselves- a tribe of sorts. The traditional ways to get this were via your town/neighborhood/local sports teams, your school, your profession, your church, and things like that.
Over time, many of those have become less prominent or never were a thing in some locations. I mean, the neighborhood/soccer team associations in Europe have never really had a parallel here in the US exactly. And lifetime jobs/professions aren’t really a thing anymore like they used to be either.
So I’m not surprised that some people will, for lack of a better description, gin up their own via self-diagnosis or self-identifying in some particular way. Some people do it by self-identifying as some nationality of their ancestors, some do it by self-identifying with some medical/psychological issue, some do it in other ways like @FinsToTheLeft’s gifted students’ identities.
I’ll even admit that as my kids have progressed in Cub and Boy Scouts, it’s been nice in the sense that it feels very comfortable to me personally, because I was part of the organization myself when I was younger, and despite many changes, still feels very “right” to me. That said, without kids in it, I doubt I’d have ever sought it out to become re-acquainted with the organization otherwise.
Yes?
I am not arguing that there is no benefit to having safe spaces.
But you appear to be arguing that it’s somehow bad to want to live near some people who are like you. Maybe i just don’t understand you properly.
Yes you are misunderstanding.
I merely question your claim that people are happier when they hang out with people like themselves. Sometimes in some cases maybe but as a general rule I don’t think so. I think people like having some commonality among people who are different.
The value judgement of “bad” regarding self segregation was not my point. Nor was there any claim that having these groups and new clubs is bad. There was an observation regarding how there seems to be an increase in certain forms of self identification and a speculation as to why. My own preferences are my own and not held up as correct or incorrect.
I disagree heartily with this. I have never encountered anyone who didn’t not only prefer but actively schemed to spend most of their time with people like themselves and avoiding people who are not like themselves.
“Like themselves” seems to be the point that divides us. You appear to be interpreting that as nothing less than a roomful of DSeids, while I - and I believe Puzzlegal and others - define it much more broadly. Even here on the Dope I avoid threads on topics I have little knowledge of or interest in. I prefer those that I can contribute to or at least read to learn something of value. This is not a condemnation of threads, merely an acknowledgement that other people have other interests I don’t share, something that is I believe universal. Nobody here posts in every single thread (well, possibly Chronos). The Dope is a microcosm of the real world in that aspect.
The ability and desire to select membership is the foundation of all groups and clubs. Most people already need to share their workdays with a cadre of unselected people, and most people complain about work and especially about being required to attend work-related activities outside of the work day. Imagine a world in which you also would be randomly placed with groups of random others and told to spend your leisure time there. For most people that would be a nightmare dystopia.
Your argument sounds to me as if that would be your preference. If not, than I truly misunderstand everything you’re saying.
Even in colleges where you go to broaden your mind and experiences you tend to gravitate to your kind.
It’s just how it is. No one wants to be odd one out.
We tend to disparage the loner individual. The person with no friends for whatever reason. “They don’t fit in. They cooperate, they don’t try”
What the heck? Maybe they’d rather be alone.
It just doesn’t seem right to everyone else.
So, they ignore, poke fun at or, in the least, try to rehabilitate the person(teachers often do this by throwing the different kid into a project with a group they necessarily don’t wanna be around).
Yep. It’s not easy being green.
Yes, i certainly don’t want to spend all my time with people exactly like me. And i love novelty, and actively seek out experiences with people who are different from me. But i like to spend a substantial chunk of time with people i have things in common with. And i think almost everyone is happier if they have that opportunity.
So true! As a big fan of P.G. Wodehouse, I sometimes feel that I inhabit that world of early 20th century London and English country houses. And indeed, practically every major character belonged to a club the reflected their identity. The nobility always belonged to something staid like the Conservative Club. Most of the young characters like Bertie Wooster (which Wodehouse once described as “knuts”, an archaic term for the young idle rich) belonged to the Drones Club, an unruly place where members threw bread rolls at each other. Even butlers had their own club. Jeeves belonged to the beautifully named Junior Ganymede Club, which maintained a special book where all the butlers recorded the deepest dark secrets about their employers, which they were bound never to reveal to outsiders. 
Not in the Wodehouse world, at least. Restaurants – typically upscale restaurants in fine hotels – and nightspots were frequent gathering places. Clubs were more the sorts of places where one retreated to get away from the world and be with one’s own kind.
“Oh, my head! …Feels like the time I was initiated into the Silly Buggers Society at Cambridge!.. I misheard the rules and pushed a whole aubergine into my earhole!”
“Permission to die sir?”
File photo:
I kind of have a chip on my shoulder when people laud the joys of spreading out the minorities so all the majority folks get to experience them, based on my elementary school experience. I wasn’t actually the only Jew in my grade, there was one other Jewish girl. But she was always in the other class to “balance the classes”. There was a boy who liked math, but he was always in the other class to “balance the classes”. Probably even worse, my cohort had 50 kids split into two classes. There were only 10 boys, and in the interests of “balancing the classes”, we had 20 girls and 5 boys in each class every year. The boys were always an awkward minority. I think they would have done better if they’d been grouped together, and the girls could have been cycled through the “coed” class so all the girls had some years of an all-girls class and some years of a mixed-gender class.
I think spreading people thin probably is great for the majority. After all, they have plenty of people “like them” and also get some interesting diversity to spice things up. But it can suck for the minorities who don’t have a critical mass of people they share commonalities with.
That’s the thing! Black and Jews just want to be with their own kind, and at the same time they’re pushy, always trying to mix in where they’re not wanted. 
It seems like the most popular group identification on social media currently is We Are Not Fooled/Do Not Comply. All that’s necessary for membership is a conviction that all major media, experts and government officials are out to control and deceive you. Remember, They don’t want you to know!
