“Demographic” here can be any niche that you identify with: race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, political belief, religion, hobby, etc.
Edit: It’s been great reading all the wonderful responses and getting the reminder of the various challenges people face and how much we all also share. Thanks to everyone who’s been responding!
48 comments
Motorcycling, like many hobbies perceived as somewhat masculine or uncultured, has a full range of participants. Nobody makes more fun of the faux “badasses” as much as fellow bikers.
Also, brand or style of bike does not determine somebody’s credentials or ability. Every sub-group of bikers has their own particular brand of moron.
Squids. HOGs. Airheads. Dirtheads.
Many non-riders dislike motorcyclists, but nobody dislikes motorcyclists as much as fellow motorcyclists.
Straight people flat out do not understand just how defining of a moment realizing that you’re gay/lesbians/bi/trans/etc can truly be.
Like in a thought process that takes maybe a minute (but feels like a week) we realize
* Our lives won’t be how we imagined
* Our marriages won’t be as we expected
* Our Existence is political
* Just how many straight people are bigoted when they think there aren’t any queer people around
* Millions in your country despise you
* A huge portion of the world has laws on the books saying “death to the gays”
* The dominate religion in this country either hates you or says they like you but never does anything about their peers who do hate us
* You have to always be kind of alert for your own safety
* And so much more.
And usually folks realize they’re queer when they’re in their teens, which is just super sobering to be honest.
Also coming out isn’t a one and done thing. It is a constant thing as we meet new people, and a constant pick your battles moment. And it’s difficult because you have to be prepared for a bad reaction. Like it does get less difficult but never is truly easy.
Please don’t call us Latinx. The vast and I mean vast majority of Latinos hate it and it’s impossible to say in Spanish which shows how out of touch that word is.
81% of black Americans do not want a decreased presence of police in their neighborhood
GenX. Our parents were neglectful by today’s standards (we were the latchkey kids and the ones told to just be home by dark), we survived just fine, and we are better off for it today.
Hard-of-hearing….
Background music makes it harder to hear what people are saying; hearing aids amplify speech and music at the same time, so really don’t help. (Some newer hearing aids tend to favor speech, but only so much.)
We all unconsciously read lips, and for hard-of-hearing people, it is important to face them when you are taking to them. And if you mumble or slur your words, understand that hard-of-hearing people will struggle to know what you are saying. Enunciate and dontrunyourwordstogether.
About my race: “Acting black” isn’t a real thing. People’s behavior is determined by upbringing and their environment.
Gender: Men make just as caring parents as women.
Hobby: Shooting is for everyone. Not every gun owner is a white conservative male.
Kids these days aren’t more mentally ill. Our parents have the same problems but think it’s normal and that you’re weak if you actually want to treat your issues
Black Americans don’t hate random white people in the street because of slavery (if there’s any hate it’s for other reasons) and we don’t alienate other black people for being educated. Never heard the latter happen once, completely made up bullshit originating from people outside of the black community
Am old. Am alone. Am living on disability after a catastrophic physical issue.
I am not a “boomer”. I don’t have money, I don’t have an attitude, I don’t vote conservative. Yet, here I am being all entitled /s
Not all Brown people that appear Latino speak Spanish.
Not all Christians are MAGA.
All pre-millennial generations: we did a ton of sketchy shit when we were young and dumb, as all generations do. But there is no surviving documentation (like phone photos or social media) of any of it. So we are able to leave our youthful stupidity completely in the past. We’re sorry younger people don’t have this.
This one is kind of weird, but as a rural white American I can go weeks at a time without meeting a racial minority. I just don’t have much opportunity to interact with any. When I do it can sometimes cause awkwardness from unfamiliarity, and a lot of rural folk can get anxious about that, since we don’t want to be seen as racists for acting weird around ethnic minorities
Coming out of the closet isn’t a one-time event where the world suddenly knows that you’re gay, bi, trans, non-binary, whatever. It’s a constant thing whenever you meet someone new.
Every job interview, every coworker interaction, every new acquaintance, every friend of a friend, you’re always testing the waters on “Is this person I just met a bigot or not? Can I trust this person to not mistreat me?” Introductions aren’t just introductions and you develop a sixth sense on who you can be open to and who you need to keep at arm’s length.
It genuinely gets exhausting after awhile.
Not all Floridians are wack jobs. I hate seeing what’s happening to the only home I’ve ever known. Not just politically, but also socially and environmentally.
The transplants are so disrespectful towards our native habitats. Every time I go hiking or to one of the springs I always leave with a full trash bag of litter. I do Beach cleanups almost every weekend and, again, we always collect dozens of bags of trash. Please if you come here respect nature and clean up after yourself. The ecosystem is very delicate.
I also hate that the influencers are sharing some of our locals only spots. I went to my favorite fishing hole a few weeks back and by the time I was ready to leave it was over run with people swimming and boats making crazy wake. It grinds my gears when these spots get shared on social media and the people who have been peacefully enjoying them for generations can’t anymore.
I know I sound like a boomer, but seriously get tf out of my swamp!
I’m a teacher.
I’m not broke, nor have I ever been, it was lean when I started, but when I count my total compensation package, I’m doing just fine.
I’m not pushing a leftist agenda.
I don’t feel attacked by parents or the media.
My goal is to give children the skills so they can think, problem solve and thrive in society.
My job is really hard (yes, I’ve worked outside of education). I cry at night when I hear about the hardships my students live through, but I also beam when they are successful.
We(military veterans) aren’t all right-leaning conservatives.
I didn’t buy a pickup truck because I’m insecure about my masculinity. I bought one because it was the best mix of price, features, and availability. Turns out half ton pickups are great family vehicles.
Adult adoptee here. I can’t access my family medical history (I can only piece it together with 23 & Me) and I’m not legally supposed to have my original birth certificate (so if I lose it I’m screwed). I am not an orphan, in fact most “orphans” are not orphans and many babies are not voluntarily relinquished. I wish we weren’t used as pawns in the abortion debate, or treated as the solution to peoples’ infertility issues. I’m also a transracial adoptee, and I wish other POC could accept us as part of the diaspora, our stories are just different from theirs.
Slavic- Just because we have vaguely Russian sounding last names does not mean we are FSB agents
A lot of people are surprised when they meet my late-50s Indian-American parents, and learn that they don’t have an accent and are as American as most of the other people you meet in your life. People assume all Indian-Americans immigrated fairly recently, but both sides of my family have been in this country for well over 50 years now.
– Not all veterans are conservative/nutjob right wingers.
– The experiences of veterans are ***not*** universal. I mean, I was on a boomer, so my experience was different from a fast boat guy. And our experiences on submarines are different from skimmer pukes. And the Navy is different from the Army. (And I was in during the Cold War, so VERY different from veterans post Cold War and especially of the 2000’s in the Middle East.)
* Not everyone’s disability is obvious. Plenty of people who *look normal* have an invisible disability. Please just let us be and don’t call the cops on us for parking in a handicapped space or utilizing disability services.
* Only about 20% of wheelchair users are completely paralyzed with absolutely no function in either their legs, arms, or both. Someone getting up out of a wheelchair or moving their legs while sitting in one does not mean they are faking. People with heart and breathing problems often use wheelchairs because they fatigue so quickly.
* There is no paperwork/certification/license/registration/etc for service animals. You can ask someone if their animal is a service animal and what their function is (sight, cardiac alert, blood sugar detection, etc) and that’s it. Outside of that opens your establishment to a discrimination lawsuit if you deny them service or question their disability.
* Don’t pet service animals. They are working. Strangers coming over to pet them can distract them and cause them to miss what they are supposed to alert for. You can ask their human if it’s ok to pet them, but please do not be hurt or offended if they say no. It’s literally for their own safety and well being.
I’m a lot of stuff, but I think the one that effects me the most is being a man.
I use to work at a preschool. The kids loved me. The teachers loved me. My site director loved me. But the parents acted like I’m a pedophile yet to be proven. When I told a grandma picking up her child that her child is in the bathroom (because, you know, knowing where the kids are is my job), my site director had to pull me over the next day and ask that if any girls need to go to the bathroom, to get a female staff (which was literally everyone else in the building). I would literally just take the kids to the bathroom and wait outside the door for them, but that had to be modified because I’m a man. I was objectively better trained and vetted than most parents, yet I’m the predator. The worst part about it is when I told my family and friends about how I felt about the whole thing, they said “well, that’s said, but you never know” like if the thought of “how can they know if I’m going to rape their kid or not” is suppose to comfort me.
People say men don’t like kids and I can see why. When a man does try to be teachers or in caregiving roles, they’re treated like a threat. I had **one** parent even take the time to talk to me. I’ve choose a different career path and even though I would actually like to work with kids, I know that’s not a realistic option for me.
I choose to live in a very rural area, and completely loathe cities and city issues.
I’m also a rabid Progressive, hate t-rump with every fiber of my being, and despise those who are trying to turn this country into a theocracy and who are trying to destroy people who are different in any way.
There are actually a LOT of us Rural Lefties. Usually we are in the minority, but in some places, like where I live now, we are in the majority.
So one of the things that really bothers me about many (though not all) urbanites, particularly coastal urbanites, is the way they lump all rural people (and all people living in the middle of the country) into the dumb maga redneck stereotype. Shut up and look at your own prejudice.
Indigenous Americans are for the most part, just regular people. When you meet us you don’t have to list all the ‘wrongs’ that were done against our ancestors. We know. We use cell phones, go to movies, eat pizza, do all the things most Americans do.
Gay community: we like pride and representation because we often don’t feel comfortable being ourselves or have adequate role-models growing up. It’s nice to have a sense of being happy and confident just being you. We also prefer gay characters to be developed organically — we don’t like “queer pandering” when creators just arbitrarily claim that a character is LGBT. We aren’t trying to actively shove pride down other people’s throats, we literally are just trying to have a celebration for ourselves — we can’t help if the local news stations want to cover it and plaster it everywhere. And we know that companies are not being genuine and are only trying to make money when they sell pride themed merch.
The Latino population is constantly assumed to be an easy win for the Democrats in any election. In reality, Latinos lean way more conservative than people realize, and when anything turns from blue to red the Latino voter turnout or Latinos in general are some of the first to get the blame. I thought we all would have learned this by now, but Democrats and Liberals desperately need to stop assuming that all Latinos automatically vote blue, ESPECIALLY the ones in red states.
Being a Redneck isn’t limited to 1 race. I know white rednecks, black rednecks, Asian rednecks, Hispanic rednecks. It’s a mindset and lifestyle.
You can be mixed race and fair skinned.
Not all Jews support or like Israel. Especially among younger generations, there’s a very strong push against Israel’s policies and violence toward the Palestinians, as well as against intertwining Israel with Jewish identity in general. There’s a documentary about to come out about this: [https://www.israelismfilm.com/](https://www.israelismfilm.com/)
Israel is a nation-state founded in 1948. Judaism is a religion founded ~6th century BCE. These are not the same thing. There are many different strains and sects of Judaism and Jewish thinking about politics, including non-Zionist and actively anti-Zionist Judaism.
Disentangling discussion of Israel from discussion of Judaism is really fraught for a lot of reasons, including but not limited to…
1. There are absolutely people who dress up hatred of Jews as criticism of Israel. And there are absolutely people who dismiss legitimate criticism of Israeli policies as necessarily anti-Semitic.
2. A lot of the most prominent Jewish political organizations are expressly Zionist organizations, and they tend to do the above-mentioned thing of conflating any and all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
3. From a very young age, American Jews are taught to love Israel, and see it as directly connected to their own Jewish identity. Hebrew schools teach units about Israel, Israeli college kids visit American synagogues, and of course, after your Bar/Bat Mitzvah, you can go on Birthright, an all-expenses-paid trip across the country. Naturally, the plight of the Palestinians is not mentioned at all in any of these things. So Jews grow up feeling like they know a lot about Israel, but it’s only the side of Israel which the country wants to show the world.
4. Israel was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, so to Zionists, Israel is considered our only real insurance against another attempted genocide of the Jews. They hear criticism of Israel and think “without Israel, there’s nothing to stop another Holocaust.” Relatedly…
5. The fact that a nation-state founded by the victims of crimes against humanity has itself (in my opinion) carried out crimes against humanity is too intensely painful of an irony for a lot of Jews to face head-on. Especially if one is highly conscious of the discrimination and genocides which Jews have faced throughout history, the thought that “our” country could be doing something similar to a different group of people is too painful to stomach. So like anyone in denial, these people refuse to see what their eyes show them.
Orientation: Too many Americans reduce being gay down to “what bits you like.” For me, it’s never really been about that, and the romantic attraction to men is a much bigger deal. Yet conversations about gay people are almost always sex centered.
Political Belief: I am somewhere between a Social Democrat and a Social Liberal. When i use those terms, I get causal jabs from both my right wing family for being a socialist and my left wing friends for being a capitalist, so I don’t tend to use either.
Religion: I am a Unitarian Universalist, and no, we don’t “believe every religion is true.” What we do believe is that wisdom and truth may be found across religions, and that our shared humanity should lead us to support each other in our own personal faith journeys. Even then, congregations are democratic and not required to espouse a specific doctrine, so you get a lot of variety. Some are still Christian churches, some are traditional Unitarian or Universalist churches, and some like mine are quite humanist.
“Jewish” is an ethnicity much more than it is a religion.
Disabled here. Believe it or not, we are sexual and romantic beings too. We aren’t unlovable or unfuckable just bc we’re disabled.
White, male, veteran, rural gun owner.
Super liberal and not in the least bit religious.
White Southerner here.
Environmentalists shouldn’t be unwilling to work with hunters. In fact they could be fantastic allies and our natural world could be better preserved if they worked together.
Atheist here. Surveys and stuff show that atheists are one of the most hated and mistrusted groups, but I don’t really experience that in my personal life. However, I was raised Christian and can “pass” as Christian so it’s possible that people would treat me differently if they knew. Pretty much all of my close friends know, however.
I don’t talk about being atheist all the time. I don’t bash religion all the time. I have read the Bible multiple times. I’m not “angry at god.” I’m not demanding proof of a god/gods from anyone. I’m just living my life.
I have many religious friends and family members. If their religion and beliefs bring them joy/happiness/comfort, I’m happy for them. Not believing in any religion or gods or anything supernatural brings ME comfort and happiness and peace, so I just ask that others respect that for me as well.
I think many people tend to think of cities and think its all blue haired super progressive starbucks-loving hipsters and then poor minorities and that’s it.
Most cities, especially cities like new york or chicago or philly, have huge swaths of pretty normal working class enclaves that form the majority of the city. I remember my in-laws came from Georgia to my area in brooklyn and were shocked that the people in my neighborhood mostly looked like [this](https://www.brownstoner.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bensonhurst-lennys-pizza-1969-86th-street-saturday-night-fever-amny-2023-5.png) and not like… idk, [this.](https://images.thebrag.com/td/uploads/2014/03/Hipsters.jpg) Which is basically what they they were told 90% of NYC was like.
Not demographic based necessarily, but I wish Americans knew more about skin risks in general, regardless of your skin shade.
What I mean, is that I’ve had the most “progressive” Americans say the dumbest things. Like “you’re Hispanic, you don’t need sunscreen.” WTF?! Or “black people don’t tan” excuse me?!
For the record, EVERYONE needs sunscreen. While melanoma is more prevalent in fairer skinned people, people with more melanin can get it also. (RIP Bob Marley.) Tan, olive skinned people CAN burn. Darker skinned people CAN peel. Many people can get sun spots, etc.
– Latino isn’t a race. We come from every racial group and are often mixed. I may be slightly different because only one of my parents is Latino (my father). But I have family on both sides with darker and lighter skin. Culturally there a lot of shared practices. But the term should be ethnicity. Race alone doesn’t imply culture.
A lot of Latinos also have large percentages of indigenous ancestry as well That’s why some of them “Look” Native American. Pro tip: They actually [are. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castizo?wprov=sfla1) Obviously 1/4 would be mixed, but that’s still higher than most people who claim to be indigenous here in the US. Finding people over 1/2 is not that uncommon either.
– Black culture isn’t a monolith. Especially when you consider the wider diaspora. Sure I can tie back that aspect of my ancestry to Africa. But why would anyone assume someone from Nigeria or Ghana is exactly like I am? Makes no sense and doesn’t acknowledge cultural differences. I tend to say “We come from the same tree but are different branches.”
Identity in general is an onion. People need to start thinking that way instead of basing it off appearance, assumptions, and limited evidence.
Appalachians typically have a lot of pride (both regional and personal), and popular depictions of Appalachians often do not properly depict this.
Military vets: You don’t need to thank us for our service, and most of us weren’t damaged by our time in uniform.
I’m an early Millennial/late Gen Xer (Xennial?) and the number of older people that believe the Millennials are the ones who are entitled and eat Tide Pods is way too high. It’s like my brothers in Christ, some of us are damn near 40. We’re not young people anymore.
Invisible disability sufferers.
By policing handicapped parking spaces, restrooms, early boarding, and other accommodations, *you are hurting us.*
Not everyone with a disability has a wheelchair. I can walk! (So can many people with wheelchairs, so cut the shit about that too) Handicapped placards can be given to wheelchair or mobility aid users, those on oxygen, and *those who cannot walk 200 yards without a break* (that’s me).
When someone says they’re disabled, believe them.
Mixed people have their own unique struggles. We don’t speak out on it to diminish anyone else’s; it’s just weird dealing with racism in your own family.
Jewish-American: There is rich cultural history to both Judaism and the Jewish-American experience. It isn’t just not eating bacon, having a bar mitzvah, and being sad about the holocaust.
Not all homeschoolers are religious.