# Which is harder - being liberal and surrounded by conservatives, or vice versa **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 1, 2019, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871 "2019-04-01T17:59:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ZurBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/71e660/32.png) [@ZurBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZurBob)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/41 "2019-04-02T16:17:38Z")
I try to keep in mind the old adage: "Don’t argue with idiots. They’ll drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience every time. " I avoid conversation with conservatives where I live primarily because their cliches tend toward the inane, and it’s a no win situation when outnumbered 10 to 1… sort of a conversational equivalent to herding cats… so I tend to stay under the radar in the casual daily political banter around here. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/42 "2019-04-02T17:05:08Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > IME the Left are far less tolerant than the Right. And sometimes will [openly admit](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/liberal-majority-on-campus-yes-were-biased/) that they discriminate against the minority. I suspect it is at least as difficult - probably more so - to be a conservative at [Berkeley](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/09/14/uc-berkeley-ben-shapiro-speech/) or Columbia or Duke as to be a liberal at [Brigham Young.](https://theweek.com/articles/446773/where-are-real-liberals-campus) > [@Chronos](#): > > In other words, the reason why conservatives don’t react to liberal messages is that conservatives don’t read. Or perhaps because we heard it all before a hundred times a day, from Hollywood and most of the MSM and TV and CNN and etc. Which is why the notion that conservatives do, or even can, live in a bubble is unrealistic. A large majority of the national media in the US is liberal, and they cover everything from the basis that liberal views are the default where they are not self-evident. We get this kind of thing all the time. We’ve had to get used to it. The Left hasn’t - which is part of why they react as they when confronted with something they have been ignoring. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/43 "2019-04-02T17:19:49Z")
It’s an interesting question, but there’s no way to get anecdotal comparisons due to the nature of the question–or rather, the only anecdotal comparisons would be from people who were liberal in a conservative area but then became conservative and moved to a liberal area, or vice-versa. FWIW, I was a liberal in a conservative area for many years. It’s easy! All you have to do is keep your opinions to yourself and lose consciousness when you hear people spouting economic darwinism or bemoaning how unfair it is to be a white male when women and people of color get all the breaks or characterizing all Muslims as being terrorists. Of course, your blood pressure will rise until you eventually have a stroke, but not to worry! Your concerned neighbors will start a GoFundMe that’ll raise a few hundred bucks toward the thousands your insurance won’t cover. Because of my job (teacher), I didn’t get too overtly political; I have strong feelings against teachers who impose their political views on their classes. Students should learn to seek and evaluate both sides of an issue. Unfortunately the other teachers in my department, all conservatives, didn’t agree and regularly spouted conservative dogma in classes, which was no big deal except to students who were gay, for instance, and those students got no support from the conservative administration. If I’d been overtly liberal outside work in that small town, my credibility inside the classroom would have suffered. I was not a sycophant, however; I just had to be a lot more subtle and persistent in questioning conservative views and poking holes in arguments. It helped that the conservative stereotype was that liberals aren’t patriotic; since I was, they thought I couldn’t possibly be liberal and so didn’t bristle as soon as I opened my mouth. I moved to a blue region in 2016, and while there are conservatives here, people seem to get along reasonably well. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/44 "2019-04-02T17:23:24Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Where did you hear this? A guy wrote about it in [Slate](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/10/adventures-of-a-political-poseur.html) ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/45 "2019-04-02T17:29:54Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > FWIW, I was a liberal in a conservative area for many years. It’s easy! All you have to do is keep your opinions to yourself and lose consciousness when you hear people spouting economic darwinism or bemoaning how unfair it is to be a white male when women and people of color get all the breaks or characterizing all Muslims as being terrorists. Of course, your blood pressure will rise until you eventually have a stroke, but not to worry! Your concerned neighbors will start a GoFundMe that’ll raise a few hundred bucks toward the thousands your insurance won’t cover. This echoes my experience, though in my area the conservatives seem to feel less threatened by The Other and thus don’t make as much noise about it. Still though, the key to survival is to Shut Up. You have no voice, and if you express an opinion they disagree with they will relentlessly crush you with neither accuracy nor mercy. I will note that it’s possible that liberals might be as relentless in crushing dissent, but I haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing such an environment in person, sadly. ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/46 "2019-04-02T18:01:04Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I’m certainly convinced by an uncited, third-hand anecdote about a single supposed experiment run by “they” involving what appears to be a grand total of two experimental subjects. It was apparently one experimental subject with no controls or data collected. This passes as science to Republicans. **puddleglum** , sincere kudos to you for reading Slate. It’s good for us to get outside our bubbles by reading news and opinions targeted at people who don’t share our views. It does seem that you are reading into that particular article what you wanted to find though. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/47 "2019-04-02T18:31:32Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > IME the Left are far less tolerant than the Right. Tolerant of what? I’m sure the Right is more tolerant of conservative beliefs than the Left is. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/48 "2019-04-02T19:08:10Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > They did an experiment where they had a person walk around a liberal area with a conservative message on their T shirt and vice versa. The person with the conservative message on their shirt got much more verbal abuse. Conservatives are just more tolerant. Doesn’t match my experience. A friend of mine who’s a trans man did an ‘experiment’ where he stopped off at a somewhat out of the way grocery store while dressed in clothes that pretty much screamed ‘butch lesbian’. He had some older guy threaten to beat him up and drag him behind his truck until he died. Had another friend of mine who is pretty butch-looking get followed by a sherrif’s deputy and told to get the hell out of town when she stopped at a convenience store while traveling through a conservative area. Never heard of a straight person or femme-looking woman getting threatened and/or told to leave a liberal area just for looking like it though. And that experiment only covers behavior out in public in the light of day. I dare you to repeat it just by having a guy wearing a dress walk into bars in conservative areas, especially redneck bars. What response will you get there? Or maybe have a black guy with a white woman walk into similar bars. Better make your your medical, dental, and life insurance is in order first, though. Again, haven’t heard anyone feel the same risk in a white-white couple or guy wearing jeans and a t-shirt who dares walk into a bar in a liberal area. My experience is definitely that being significantly out of the norm in a conservative area is extremely dangerous. If you can pass as ‘one of them’ you’re fine, but if you aren’t following norms on things like gender, religion, sexual preference, appearance, and so on, your life is at risk. > [@Gatopescado](#): > > Easier for Libs, because conservatives are polite and have good manners. I suppose that depends on whether you consider physical violence, outright murder, threats of the preceeding, racial gender and other slurs, and the like to be ‘good manners’ or ‘polite’. Conservatives tend to use a definition of ‘polite’ that only includes ‘deference to old white people, and to white men by white women too’ so that they can consider the upstanding citizens beating a queer man to death or picketing an abortion clinic ‘polite’, but I don’t really accept that one. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/49 "2019-04-02T19:16:41Z")
I’ve been threatened with death for my views on gun control (which truthfully aren’t even all that extreme, and indeed, generally fall outside of “liberal” orthodoxy) and on Trump. I’m not saying conservatives don’t get death threats from liberals; I’m sure it happens. Which side gets it more I can’t say. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/50 "2019-04-02T19:19:44Z")
I am entirely apolitical “IRL”. I won’t say or post anything political whatsoever under my real name. I lean conservative, but also have several progressive views, for maybe different reasons than some liberals. I work in a purple state, so most people are like me, they just don’t talk politics. There is one guy I know that’s constantly bashing Trump and conservatism (IRL and on Facebook). When this happens I politely nod my head and smile, maybe give a “yeah” when I agree with him, but I’m generally enough of a blank slate that he simmers down after a while. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/51 "2019-04-02T19:20:24Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Doesn’t match my experience. A friend of mine who’s a trans man did an ‘experiment’ where he stopped off at a somewhat out of the way grocery store while dressed in clothes that pretty much screamed ‘butch lesbian’. He had some older guy threaten to beat him up and drag him behind his truck until he died. Had another friend of mine who is pretty butch-looking get followed by a sherrif’s deputy and told to get the hell out of town when she stopped at a convenience store while traveling through a conservative area. Never heard of a straight person or femme-looking woman getting threatened and/or told to leave a liberal area just for looking like it though. Straight people are 96% of the population, LGBT only 4%. It would make no sense for a liberal area to threaten someone for being straight when the vast majority of liberals are straight. Not saying that conservative threatening of LGBT people is okay; just saying that if liberals wanted to threaten someone for looking straight, they’d have to kick the vast majority of themselves out of the store/town/place. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/52 "2019-04-02T19:30:14Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Curious since I know many Dopers are blues living in red territory or vice versa. > > Some differences would be: > > [ul] > [li]On the basis of race, a white conservative (since the majority of conservatives are white) can easily blend in in a liberal region (i.e., urban city) without difficulty since being white doesn’t tell people much, if anything about you. But a racial-minority liberal could have it tough in a place like rural Alabama.[/li][li]On the other hand, [liberals are likelier to defriend someone on social media](http://fortune.com/2016/12/19/social-media-election/) over political views. [/li][li]Both sides get their [bumper stickers or cars vandalized](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cars-with-obama-bumper-stickers-targeted-by-vandals-at-western-washington-u/) by [the other side](https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2016/11/car_set_on_fire_spray_painted.html).[/li][li][Republicans in the San Francisco area have to behave like Democrats.](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/How-does-a-Bay-Area-Republican-survive-Act-like-13293456.php)[/li][/ul] > But anyway…I am asking more for anecdotal stuff. In general, is it harder being blue in a red region (or with red family/friends/bosses/coworkers,) or vice versa? A person who is neither fish not fowl, neither conservative nor liberal but something…else. It’s pretty tough, IMHO. On this board it’s hard, IRL it’s harder. At family gatherings I have a few VERY conservative family members and the rest or VERY liberal, and I don’t mix well wrt politics with either. I get attacked constantly, and I get shoehorned constantly and labeled a ‘conservative’ by the liberals and ‘liberal!(snarl snarl)’ by the conservatives. That’s why I’m so used to it happening on this board because IRL it’s a constant thing, just changing based on who is attacking me and what their political view point is. I often get pigeonholed into a whole line of political thought because of my response to one vertical topic. If I believe in health care reform, I’m a (damned!) liberal who agrees with liberals in lock step about everything. If I’m critical about green energy or the New Green Deal then I’m obviously a conservative, in lock step with Trump and the Republicans on everything they do or say. I get into real nasty fights with my family or family friends over immigration, even when I’m just pointing out the irony of a bunch of Hispanics complaining about illegal immigrants and the threat to the country…when most if not all of them come from families who WERE illegals when they came here (my family was). For some reason, I get more of the wrath from both sides than they give to each other. It’s not easy, being green… ---
**Author:** ![The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/53 "2019-04-02T19:56:19Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Doesn’t match my experience. A friend of mine who’s a trans man did an ‘experiment’ where he stopped off at a somewhat out of the way grocery store while dressed in clothes that pretty much screamed ‘butch lesbian’. He had some older guy threaten to beat him up and drag him behind his truck until he died. Had another friend of mine who is pretty butch-looking get followed by a sherrif’s deputy and told to get the hell out of town when she stopped at a convenience store while traveling through a conservative area. But the question isn’t whether it’s easier to look like a butch lesbian around liberals or conservatives. Your anecdote seems to indicate that the reason they were harassed had to do with their gender presentation rather than their political views. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/54 "2019-04-02T20:26:12Z")
> [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](#): > > But the question isn’t whether it’s easier to look like a butch lesbian around liberals or conservatives. Your anecdote seems to indicate that the reason they were harassed had to do with their gender presentation rather than their political views. I like the way that LGBT rights suddenly become not a political issue when conservatives want to hurt and kill people, it’s like Schoedinger’s cat. “I think that people should be allowed to wear clothing that they feel comfortable in” is only political when a conservative wants to object to it, but when a conservative seeks to enforce their values by threatening to kill someone for their outfit, the fact that they’re LGBT is suddenly devoid of any political stance so doesn’t count. What you’re doing is nothing but a cop-out, a transparent attempt to divert from the fact that failing to conform to conservative norms means putting your life at risk. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/55 "2019-04-02T20:29:52Z")
So what I’m getting from this thread is that liberals have become so sick of conservative politics that they’re not even bothering to hide their distaste for it, and that conservatives are such intolerant xenophobes that doing anything that differs from what they consider acceptable is to invite confrontations, even violent confrontations if you’re different enough. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/56 "2019-04-03T15:03:29Z")
My guess is violent confrontations are considerably less common than casually trash talking the other side. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/57 "2019-04-03T17:42:42Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > My guess is violent confrontations are considerably less common than casually trash talking the other side. But violent confrontations are common enough that it’s an expected result. Do you really think that a guy wearing a dress or an interracial couple going around to bars out in the middle of nowhere is taking no significant risk? Personal violence enforcing conservative norms is a routine and expected part of life. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/58 "2019-04-03T17:53:06Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > But violent confrontations are common enough that it’s an expected result. Do you really think that a guy wearing a dress or an interracial couple going around to bars out in the middle of nowhere is taking no significant risk? Personal violence enforcing conservative norms is a routine and expected part of life. “Out in the middle of nowhere…” One of my favorite kinds of liberal bigotry. _Of course_ rural people are dangerous bigots. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/59 "2019-04-03T18:48:56Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Out of curiosity : take the issue, abortion. > > The pro-choice people avoided the laws against it when it was illegal and got abortions in backalley clinics. [Nitpick] This is misleading. Plenty of pro-choice people don’t have abortions. _And some anti-choice people do have abortions._ An acquaintance of mine is the daughter of a GOP “pro-life” religious-right Congressman. When she became pregnant out of wedlock, the Congressman/father urged her to get an abortion! ---
**Author:** ![BeagleJesus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5daacb/32.png) [@BeagleJesus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeagleJesus)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871/60 "2019-04-03T19:36:34Z")
I think it’s significantly easier to be a liberal in a conservative area than vice versa. The reason: conservatives ain’t shit in a debate and (thanks to the Trump administration) it’s become increasingly easier to put their ignorance, bigotry and fear on display for all to see. I go into left vs. right debates armed with facts and a well thought out perspective and they come armed with bigotry, fear, conspiracy theories and the latest conjecture spoon fed to them by Fox News or some other information source prized for it’s truthiness. Once the conversation moves to an area that wasn’t discussed on Fox & Friends they are out of their depth and they know it…and then I win… I have found that if you do this enough they eventually start to avoid any conversation topic that will allow you to put their ignorance on display. It’s hard to talk shit about liberals to your conservative friends after those same friends saw a liberal hand you your ass and then gloat about it. I am one of a few black people living an area infested with Trump supporters and I am done playing nice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-harder-being-liberal-and-surrounded-by-conservatives-or-vice-versa/831871.md?page=4)