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.
I’m cishet so take my comment with a grain of salt.
Nothing in your post indicates bigotry. It seems fairly reasonable that you don’t get along with people who act in that manner, their preferences don’t factor into that at all. The difficult thing is, though, that bigotry doesn’t manifest as blind hatred of everyone that belongs to some group. Bigotry can also be when you have a “short fuse” for some people and not others. It can be a slight, imperceivable bias you have against (or even for!) some group. Not saying this is the case for you, of course, but think about how homophobes started dressing up their homophobia when it became unacceptable. They could be sharply critical of unrelated things in gay people, when really the source of the disdain was their bigotry. So just be aware of that and always practice self criticism.
But if someone calls you a bigot after you express your legitimate grievances against someone, just because that someone happens to belong to a minority group, you’re not in the wrong.
I don’t think I made it clear in my original post, but I’m attempting to present a comparison and contrast of two couples that my partner and I call friends and are perceived as community leaders.
KB seems like they have issues with anyone they deem below their social standing. Nothing bigoted here from you, and no sexual orientation or community status cancels out chud behavior. If they’re friends, maybe try to hash it out? We were all libs at some point.
Sorry. If they’re lesbians then they are shining stars and they do not deserve any hate or criticism. You can’t do that
tone spoiler
/s…
both of them quietly refer to service tradepersons as servants
