[Corkey]

Originally Posted by Dance-with-me

I don't know how to write this without it possibly sounding snarky, so I'll just open by saying that I don't mean it that way at all.

But it's easy to say that you're not going to have anything to do with a specific general community when you have choices. When you don't have choices -- when one general community is pretty much all you've got -- you find yourself deciding that it's worth the effort to try and find the kindred spirits in that community, even though they're intermingled with the ones that you really want to avoid. If I want a social life here, I cannot keep myself fully separate from the ones who show their asses publicly because they are going to be at the only public events available to them or to me. I can ignore them, I can look for the ones who seem put off by them, but I can't separate myself from them.

And honestly? I wouldn't be doing this to say anything to them: Those folks will hopefully not come to a discussion like this. I'm hoping to do this quite specifically so that people who are NOT like that can identify themselves.

I am in that un diversified boat of a town. That's why I said invite them here. I don't have any choice, it's either here or nowhere. I don't associate with people who are genderphobic, that's a personal choice. And in this town here is all I have.