I haven't posted here in a while. My keyboard breaking just as I was starting to get consistent with posting updates regarding my life certainly didn't help me here. I am just here to keep documenting my struggles with friendship because, as an autist, that is a major challenge in my life. As I've said in the past, I derive the majority of my social interactions from the internet. This obviously hasn't changed, and I just want to talk about a different topic that affected friendships online way more than I would have previously expected:
bigotry
While I do not consider myself to have bigoted views at this time, I don't choose who I interact with on this basis. I am generally willing to engage with people regardless of their views, especially if said views do not pertain to me whatsoever. Interestingly, after discovering that I am friends with a bigot, someone who interacted with me a lot chose to part ways with me. This puzzled me, as there is no reason that my other friendships should really affect my interactions with this person. I don't necessarily regret my decision to befriend bigoted individuals after this, especially considering that the person who left me seemed to dislike me for quite a while, though seemingly being unwilling to say so.
Generally, I think there is nothing wrong with being friends with bigots because if the bigotry does not pertain to you, then generally it has no impact on your interactions. Suppose I were trans and discovered that a friend of mine was transphobic. I think it would be sensible to avoid such an individual after discovering that fact. Though if I am not transgender and this person reveals their bigoted views towards transgender people, I am not particularly incentivized to cut such a person off as interacting with people does not tend to be focused on the bigoted views they have. Though, if their bigotry is applicable to you, it may come up more, so it would make more sense to cut off such a person. Additionally, as someone who has struggled with making friends, beggars can't be choosers. I am not going to vet people based on their views and how they view other people if it does not actually affect our interactions. Also, frankly, the majority of people in the world are bigoted to some degree at least. This is more likely in third-world countries where secular ideologies are less present, and people are more likely to look down on people on the basis of being homosexual, for example. So, I do not see this as an appropriate way of dismissing people personally, especially merely associating with someone like that. I myself grew up with parents who would be considered bigoted by Western standards, as such I naturally have a higher degree of tolerance for this, and I do not feel as though I should be punished in this way for this.
Experiencing how people choose to select their friends is eye-opening, though I have obviously learned the hard way in this case. Going forward, I feel as though I must conceal as much of my person as possible outside of what is strictly necessary for people interacting with me to know in order to be able to maintain friends. Generally, if people know too much about you, they may be disgusted by one aspect of your nature and extend that to your whole person. This is pretty axiomatic if what's going on in your head is remotely similar to mine. Consequently, I must be far more selective with what I reveal to people. I hope that I can progress from here...
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