When you're the forward-thinker in your family/community

[Heather]

I was reminded of this here today, but it's something that comes up here a lot, so I wanted to say something about it.

In a word, what the title says: this is for those of you who are in a place or position, and make choices, where you're someone thinking or speaking out more progressively than others immediately around you, especially with families if and when you don't have a choice yet to stay with them or not. For example, those of you in xenophobic, racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic, or anti-sex environments or communities and either stand against that just by virtue of who you are as a member of a group the -ism is directed at, or do so as an ally or just as a plain old compassionate person.

In my mother's family, my mother was a person who seemed to challenge and advance thinking and general ethos, through things like sex out of wedlock (and a young pregnancy), being a part -- through in her case, not so much by choice -- of very radical politics, being a working mother without shame or apology, and later, being outwardly pro-choice and LGBTQ-supportive. Then it was me, and it seemed -- still sometimes, but less than when I was younger -- like even with my mother being the forward-thinker in her family, what I was bringing to the table was usually well beyond where she was at, let alone the rest of her family (one of whom earnestly used to tell me I deserved abuse for basically being the antichrist in their opinion, when I was not yet even in my teens). Before her, from what I can gather, that person in the family was my great-aunt Ina, who was a nun, so I'm sure my mother felt the same way about where her own thinking was relative to hers like I did about my mother and myself.

There sometimes is more than just one person in families like this, perhaps obviously. But in my life and work experience, there usually is at LEAST one, and that person winds up having a much bigger impact over time than they probably think or anticipate when they're younger. In my own family alone, I know that who I am per both my life circumstances and experiences and what I do and say has made a big impact on my mother's family: with every year that passes, one of my aunts, uncles or cousins -- as well as my mother and sister -- express that to me clearly in some way. I also have found that being who I am has made me a sort of safe haven for members of that family sometimes, per talking to someone about issues or dynamics that have been problematic or outright destructive, but where they don't feel able to disclose to anyone else or even just talk to anyone else freely.

The way I am treated within that family has also changed radically over time, with a respect often afforded to me I never would have expected back when.

When I was younger, the way it felt was that the impact of who I was and what I spoke out about was only, at best, going to be much more immediate, like only -- if I was lucky -- influencing the thinking of my immediate family. Everyone else either seemed pretty hopeless to me, out of reach, or like nothing could change because I wasn't around them much or at all. But it's since become clear that -- duh, I know -- people talk amongst themselves, including about people they only hear things from or about second or third-hand. People also are often seeing you from afar when you don't really realize it or have your attention elsewhere. My mother's family, on the whole, has changed IMMENSELY just in my four-and-a-half decades of life, and I know a lot of those changes have to do with us folks who challenged old, tired or just-plain-wrong ways of thinking or behaving. That's pretty amazing, I think.

But it is often very stressful and scary to be that person in a family or any other group or community (and more so when you're young, I think, and you often feel under attack and under a microscope no matter what, from pretty much everywhere). Being a maverick in any way is challenging and asks a lot of a person. It also shines a light on that person that can make them more vulnerable than others, sometimes a lot more vulnerable. We risk being ostracized or worse sometimes. Our opinions will often be challenged by standards the status-quo opinions or beliefs are not challenged by. Same can go for our behaviour.

So, for one, I want to be clear that any of you who are this person or aspire to be this person? Kudos to you. It's a big deal. It matters. A lot. It's a really big gift to give to people (even though some don't view it that way at the time, and some never may see it that way) and the world, as well as to yourself, IMO. I'm glad you're in this world, and I, personally, feel more supported, less isolated and much more hopeful because you are.

I also just wanted to open up an avenue for folks to talk about this, support each other around it, and give some room to get a breather when it's stressful, including room to take some time off from being that person.

[Jacob]

I can so relate... especially when I'm away from supportive contact. Far from feeling like I'm a 'forward thinker', it is really common for family, acquaintances and more recently work colleagues to have me feel like I'm just making life hard for others, being awkward, reckless and overcomplicating life by thinking differently to them.

I have to say one reason I've been able to survive all that constant low-level criticism is Scarleteen. Just to know that I should seek out the friends and communities who would make up my now support network, is something which took a long time to learn, mostly here.

[Onionpie]

I experience a bit of a weird version of this, because I live in what is pretty much a kind of liberal haven. So I don't get ostracized or criticized, and I feel really grateful and lucky to have that -- but what I do feel an AWFUL lot is just plain lonely. All of my friends and family are liberal forward-thinkers to some degree or other, but it's only ever to a degree that is... less left-wing than mine It's the Liberal kind of liberal, where they have generally left-leaning beliefs, but they do not care as deeply/are as aware of the deeper issues. Like, for example, everyone I know supports same-sex marriage. But pretty much zero of them really know about or understand the complexities of life as a queer person, or other more complicated LGBTQ issues. Everyone I know is very adamantly against racism... but they don't know about or want to talk about the subtle way racism ingrains itself in our ways of thinking, or the way "benevolent" racism, like benevolent sexism, is still just as damaging.

My parents were both serious hippies growing up in the 60s, they are both strongly pro-choice, LGBTQ-friendly, angered by things like the murder of Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin, know that rape culture is a thing and that it is horrendous, but I still take things further than they do. They don't understand all the new discussions about gender at all, and while they are awesome in that they try to be supportive and learn (my brother's partner is trans and their family refuses to call them by their preferred name and pronouns, but my parents do it) there are still some very outdated ideas that they hold around gender. They're also not so aware of more subtle forms of racism like micro-aggressions, etc.

So in the end, I feel like there's really nobody in my life who can really have these in-depth conversations with me, and every time I say something I wonder if it's too "radical" for the people in my life and maybe they'll argue it. I constantly feel on guard when I state my opinions, because I'm never sure if it'll turn into an argument/debate that I wasn't expecting. It's partly why I am SO into online social justice communities, and it's also the reason I became best friends with my now-partner -- we both discovered that we share the same politics and the passion for social justice. In this sea of liberal-ness, that seems to be the key thing that is missing from anyone's liberal opinions, real fiery passion about social justice.

[Redskies]

Seems isolated forward-thinkers are in good company here!

I'd say this was me, too, growing up. I don't want to ramble at too much length (although I'm willing to, if anyone felt it'd be helpful for them and specifically asked ), but perhaps saying a little about another different experience of this might help some folk.

I grew up around many Very-Not forward-thinking attitudes and realities, in different ways; for example, people who believed that a marriage is unbreakable for life. My parents were homophobic. In the town around me, all kinds of crappy behaviour - like cheating, or domestic violence - was looked down on and yet also normalised: so long as people did things that looked like it was trying to be the norm - eg, supposed to be a monogamous marriage, having kids, having some kind of 9-5 or industrial/service shift-work job - a person was baseline acceptable. Trying to step outside normative bounds, even in ways that are perfectly ethical and healthy, and a universe-better than domestic violence or basic disrespect and untrustworthiness, was just Not Ok and people couldn't get their heads round it, At All.

I didn't and mostly don't experience forward-thinkingness or not-forward-thinkingness to be particularly related to any political scale; I've found it to transcend that, and be much more related to both of how much of a decent human being someone is, and what life experiences and attitudes they have and have not been close to.

I was taught - not explicitly, but still very clearly - to fear people who were notably different from the norm, and to avoid them. Unfortunately, I was very outside-the-norm myself in many ways from a fairly young age; I knew that deep inside myself, and I knew how different I was from most people around me, except I didn't have any framework for defining who I was or what I believed, because I'd been exposed to almost no alternatives. I just knew I was different, and that the world seemed to me to be bizarre and unrelatable, but only for me, no-one else. I was very confused and lonely! That's made it a lot harder for me to connect with people who I *am* better suited to, because 1) it took so very long to discover that those people actually exist, and b) it's hard to adjust to not being the "only one" and keeping everything I am and think to myself automatically, and to not automatically assume that *no-one* will be my kind of person.

I was fortunate in some ways, because some family members, for example, while having strict attitudes for themselves, didn't feel that Everyone should also follow those attitudes, and taught me not to be judgemental too. My mother grew up in a family that was very Everything-ist, and unlearned all of those -isms throughout her life, so I had a model for questioning other people's and one's own attitudes; she was also the "forward-thinker" and different one from that family and was almost nothing she was "supposed" to be, so while she couldn't relate to some of where my thinking is and wasn't supportive of some of the details, she was very supportive of me being my own person and understood what it's like to be different from your family and the people around you. I think I would've lost my sanity without that input from her, and I doubt I would've found my way to my own self. I have no idea how people manage who have absolutely no support from anywhere close to them: those of you who are in or have been in that spot, you have my deepest respect and admiration.

I don't feel like I made much of a difference to the people around me in terms of what they learned or different viewpoints. I was mostly just trying to survive in a baffling world; it was big enough leaps to find myself and find out that there were people who were a bit different from the norm, let alone change anything. I feel bad about that. But if anyone else described a similar picture, I would think they'd done excellently and So would not think they should've, or even could've done anything else or more. I'm guessing there's plenty of you who feel or have felt in a very restricted or precarious spot - I wish you weren't! - and I don't think you should or could do "better". If you feel bad about that, like you "should" do or have done better, that feeling doesn't mean it's true! It's the world around you that should do better, not you. And those of you who make just a little space to say or be something without great risk to yourself - thank you for that. The small things add up to something powerful.