And Then There's This

sarrabuggg:

sirpuddleduck:

sarrabuggg replied to your post: hey! if you don’t mind my asking, what part of rural indiana did you live in?

i did, actually! i lived in a teeny town called friendship, which was located a pretty similar distance from cincinatti and louisville, actually. it was pretty conservative, but it was beautiful and super laid back, and i still kind of miss it.

That’s just a bit up the road from Hanover - only 33 miles according to google maps, which it was totally NOT creepy to look at, right? Cool.  The Midwest and the South are weird places for me in that they are (typically) so socially conservative, and therefore should be really uncomfortable for me, but I just love everything else about the culture so much that it somehow makes up for it.  Or I’m unwittingly filled with self-loathing and want to live among people who think I’m sinful as some sort of penance.  Basically, I feel you on the “it was conservative but beautiful and laid back and I miss it” vibe.

not creepy at all, i totally looked up where hanover was on google maps, too! i think until somewhat recently i was trying to deny just how much i like the way things work in a more rural setting because that’s inherently bad or something? it’s really nice though. it’s lower stress than big cities, and in my experience there’s been a tendency for folks to overlook things they are generally opposed to once you’ve established relationship with them. i know that’s still super problematic, but it definitely makes it easier to enjoy living in that setting. my opinion might be shaded by the fact that other than sarasota, i’ve never lived in a town with a population over 6,000 people, though.

Oh good not creepy!

I think it’s easy, when you are queer and still shaking free from the various horrors of going through the process of realizing it in a small town, to think that the problem is the smallness/ruralness of the town, and my god you just want to escape it and be out of there.  But people are bags of dicks everywhere, unfortunately, and there’s no escaping that, and so then you start to notice the differences that aren’t so positive on the more urban side. Nobody makes eye contact. Everything costs a billion dollars. So much rushing around and traffic and noise. It’s like being in an ant colony.  Which some people genuinely love. But if you don’t love that urban atmosphere, it will start to get a lot easier to think of yourself as happy in a rural area.  And I think you’re right about the tendency of most folks to overlook what they’re opposed to (and I should acknowledge that I’m certain being white and female helps me here - gay men and/or POC of any orientation probably have a rougher time of it).  In my experience, you’re neighbors, and politeness matters in such regions typically, so you wave and they wave and maybe tomatoes get passed over the fence and traded for zucchini or whatever, and they compliment your lights on the house at the holidays and you find something to compliment that isn’t the light-up Nativity in their yard - some call it back-stabbing, I guess, but it’s just civil behavior I think.  Neither you nor they are pretending to be friends or anything, you’re just being decent to each other.  And who knows, maybe friendly queer neighbors will help them see that the gays aren’t inherently evil.  But we’ll aim for civil behavior first …