I was curious how common it is to be, say, a leftist in a very conservative area.
My county, family, and school are all very conservative. It makes it a bit intimidating to engage in any political discussion. I also rarely get to hear leftist opinion anywhere in person, which means i need to devote a lot of time to considering and thinking about arguments that are probably already solved.
Are you, or have you been, in a similar situation?
If we consider how religion is often part of political views (with conservatives almost always being christian chuds), imagine being someone who’s fond of red candles, someone who as a cisman-presenting person enjoys letting their nails grow while painted with black and red polish, someone who sincerely worships the Mesopotamic Goddess of underworld and uses Her seal as a pendant necklace, someone who sees owls as literally sacred and literal manifestations of the Goddess, all this while having to exist in a mostly-christian country called Brasil (worse, having to biologically exist in a house rented by a bolsonarista, with nowhere else to go other than the public gravedigs of the cemetery, a place I’ve been seriously considering more and more as the days pass).
Imagine being possibly the only one holding this kind of belief in a range of 500km, with everyone around you parroting phrases such as “fica com deus” (a farewell phrase that literally translates to “stay with god”) and “deus abençoe” (“god bless you”).
Imagine attending therapists and mental health “professionals” who are visibly annoyed by your positive and ecstatic recounting of your spiritual experiences before the presence of Lilith during 3AM, to the extent of a psychiatrist diagnosing you as a “schizotypal” due to a perceived “atypical beliefs” and “magical thinking”; to the extent that even mental health care becomes part of the social bullying you face.
Imagine being unable to find employment because you don’t want to let go of the one you’ve become fond of as yourself (how’s compromising one’s own values in order to be “allowed” among society, any different from suicide, when both situations involve letting go of the one who you’ve been?), because the “job market” requires you to be assimilated into yet another physical manifestation of an Agent Smith (don’t even dare attending a job interview while having long painted fingernails because “your body looks like a male so your nails must be trimmed and you likely need to start repenting and going to church because you’re indemoniated”).
Yeah, this is me and this is my existence. And I’ve grown increasingly tired of existing in this shithole of a world.
!asklemmy@lemmy.world