My partner and I have friendships with two couples. Both couples are married lesbians. Both couples are viewed as community leaders. For simplicity I’ll refer to each couple as “KB” and “KR”.
KB are overwhelmingly neoliberal. KR are leftist leaning liberal.
KB are frustratingly capitalist. The breadwinner is a realtor. Both are overly materialistic and wasteful. They own a luxury diesel truck and a new Subaru. And this might be my most frustrated gripe, but both of them quietly refer to service tradepersons as servants. They spend lavish amounts of money on masquerading as feminists. They often cosplay for any event they attend. They have overwhelming support from the majority of our community yet constantly cause drama amongst our community members. They have a “community” swimming pool that is ultimately exclusionary and invites superficiality.
KR are community driven. They regularly hold events that support the entire community. They’ve chosen minimalism and share an electric vehicle (not a Tesla). They can be assholes towards service tradepersons, although I think much of it is due to ignorance and malinformed expectations. They are very true to themselves and do not masquerade. They also have strong support from the community, but the support is genuine. They don’t have a swimming pool. LoL.
I’ve had healthy disagreements with KR, but KB wants to punch down anytime there’s a disagreement, so I avoid conflict in order to not cause any rifts even though I often disagree with KB often.
Ultimately, I believe this boils down to my disdain for fakeness, but I can’t announce my disapproval as “fake” because the community will label me as a bigot.
So I just want to ask y’all because I trust you. Am I being a bigot? Are my frustrations misplaced? I realize everyone here doesn’t have the same assessment I do, but I’ve attempted to do my best to describe each partnership as succinctly and comprehensive that I can on a forum.
If my frustrations are misplaced, please tell me without regard for feelings. If my frustrations are valid, I don’t need additional validation because I don’t want to subscribe to an ego that could cause further division due to support.
Mostly, I don’t want to feel guilty because I don’t have blanket support for people that are not representative of ideals that I feel are valid.
However, I am open to suggestions and guidance on navigating each of these friendships without creating rifts that divide our community. I want to be supportive towards any group that doesn’t always have overwhelming community acceptance.
You gotta be able to hit back the neolibs back, verbally, in a manner that exposes their shitty behaviour, if feasible. Become a pillar of the community, if possible. Maybe raise your concern when they say something crass, wait for an opportunity to bring up that it must be nice to afford that much cosplay, small nasty ways to show they are not the same as the rest of the community (if the community is overwhelmingly petit bourgs or LA or
, don’t bother too much.) I am at the same spot with a bunch of people and if you are in a place to put them down without losing access to vital ressources and have taken precautions, there are only so many ways we can fight back rn and wrestling control from shitty “community leaders” is the best we can hope for, often.
I don’t mean to talk down to you, your irritation is valid, I just think it shouldn’t be the end point, otherwise it will just turn into stewing resentment. I am not excluding myself from needing to do that more often,