Something I’ve been thinking about for the past several years but that I’ve been fully brooding about since the election (and the attendant flurry of takes about “polarization”) is this: when and under what circumstances is it possible to be friends (or lovers, for that matter) with someone with whom you have vehement political or moral disagreements? (There is now a whole discourse about whether right-leaning men and left-leaning women can love each other, Lord help us.)
Simply hating and dismissing everyone who disagrees with you in any way about anything is a non-starter, for obvious reasons involving understanding and compassion and intellectual integrity and so on and on. But lately, there has been a spate of exhortations to unity that I also find a little facile. Moral and political disagreements have real stakes, obviously, and it isn’t clear to me that it’s always possible for someone to cultivate emotional intimacy with a person she regards as hostile to her values, perhaps even to her very personhood. I do not have answers to this question that satisfy me—not by a long shot—so I’m writing primarily with a request for any thoughts you have about this, or any good writing you’ve seen about it. This is also a cri du coeur or whatever because I am experiencing some degree of spiritual turmoil.
Here are my preliminary thoughts. They are nascent and subject to change and refinement (that’s why I’m inviting disagreement). In brief, I think it’s impossible to befriend someone who is incapable of viewing you as an equal. In an earlier post, I put the idea like this (I’ve edited the passage a bit to reflect both my current convictions and confusions): “Minimally, in order to be friends with someone, you must regard them as a full-fledged agent who is your fundamental equal in some core sense. (In what exact sense? I’m not sure.) You cannot view a friend as a fragile child, adult in name only, in want of protection and gentle correction. Adult friendship requires what Hegel-pilled philosophers call recognition, a mutual acknowledgment of full-fledged humanity. I’m not saying merely that it is morally bad to view an adult human in patronizing and infantilizing terms, although that is probably true; I’m saying that it is not possible, given what friendship is, to befriend someone you view in this way (or who views you in this way). A relationship of condescension is simply inconsistent with the basic nature and requirements of friendship. Anyone incapable of viewing me as a moral or intellectual equal could be my babysitter or maybe my jailor, but he or she could never be my friend. It’s possible to stand in a recognition-relation to someone with whom you disagree about a lot. But—but!!—there are surely some views that preclude recognition.”
Note that I am not saying that someone who is incapable of affording me recognition should be excluded from public life; that he or she should be blamed for the results of the election, or that politicians should ignore his or her desires and dissatisfactions; that the best way to win elections (from a purely practical and amoral perspective) is to mock him or her; or, crucially, that he or she should be de-platformed. I’ve always been skeptical of the idea, prevalent among certain liberals during the first Trump administration, that the best way to deal with an objectionable idea is to deplatform it (that is, to refuse to acknowledge it). In the internet era, there are platforms aplenty. It is not possible to deny anyone a platform, and it wouldn’t be a good idea, even if it were possible. The only option is to contest an idea that you think is bad or dangerous as vigorously as possible, preferably in public, because ignoring it won’t make it go away. For this reason, I’m always happy to engage intellectually with people I think are wrong, even with people I think are evil. But whether I am happy to allow them into my private life, or whether I am capable of loving them and letting them love me, is another matter entirely.
During the first Trump presidency, a lot of liberals seemed to think that the primary reason to refuse to engage with anyone on the right was that engagement amounted to endorsement. I don’t think engagement amounts to endorsement in the least. No one reasonable should think that you’re bound to endorse everything someone you love or befriend endorses (much less everything someone you debate in a public forum endorses, lol). But I’m offering another reason why friendships between stark enough ideological opponents might not be possible: namely, that friendship requires recognition.1
So here’s my own line in the sand, my own sense of what precludes someone from recognizing me. If you are a gender essentialist—if you think all or most women are or should be caring, nurturing, maternal, and ill-suited to traditionally masculine activties like ratiocination—you cannot be my friend. And if you think that all women (and by extension, me) are secretly yearning to have children and could not be truly and deeply fulfilled by art-making or intellectual pursuits, you cannot be my friend.
There is nothing more patronizing than someone telling me what I actually want, regardless of what I say about my own desires, regardless of my many years of intimacy with myself. I don’t want to have children because I feel, somewhat ridiculously but I guess unabashedly, that writing is my calling. Literature gives me everything I want from this life; literature is my point of access to a world so much bigger and richer than life on this earth. Will I ever manage to write anything great? I have no idea, but my religion is that I was put here to spend my days trying. If you don’t believe me that writing is enough for me—that I cannot imagine anything more abundant and beautiful—you do not respect me. You cannot be my friend.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking lately. Am I wrong? What should I read?
I’m not saying this is the only reason that friendships between those with different political or moral commitments might prove impossible. As I said at the outset, I don’t have settled views about this question, and I want to chat about it with all of you. O
I'm guessing you were not born into a conservative household or state, but maybe I'm wrong. Most of the people I've known in my life are now Trumpers. Perhaps this doesn't directly contradict what you've said, but I think the category of people you are thinking of (Trump conservatives) when you say people who cannot recognize you as an equal, oversimplifies that group. Even the racist Trumpers I've known were friends with black people and genuinely liked them, because though they think ideologically in groups about brown people or women or what have you, in their day to day, they are still intelligent individuals who recognize the humanity in people they meet--they just mentally label them as exceptions, or don't even consciously experience the contradiction at all. Someone who thinks all women should have kids may not think that is true about you at all, because people aren't logical. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that all these attempts at clear analysis of this kind of thing strike me as completely inapplicable to my experiences growing up with, fighting, hating, and loving my political opposites, and seem very much a product of academics who spend no significant time around Trumpers, so think of them in simplified (perhaps condescending) terms. I'm not saying "not all Trumpers". I'm just saying, people are people, and even the Trumpers know that, even if they pretend they don't.
I think the thing is that you can be “friendly” to people who differ in important ways mentioned here— meaning you can be civil, even enjoy their company in the right circumstances— but serious friendship is like a contract, and it isn’t wrong to have dealbreakers. The particular one you’re demanding isn’t at all unreasonable. Your friendship is something people earn, and while I don’t believe all conservatives/all Trump voters are awful in the ways many assume, a lack of respect for women really should disqualify you for serious friendship with women. It would be a disqualifier for me, at least in part because I assume I’d find this person tedious and dull. Prejudices like that are usually not consistent with the kind of curiosity about the world that I value in the people I spend precious time with. Theoretically an egregiously prejudiced person could be a fascinating and stimulating thinker, but in practice I assume this would be atypical.