> I think a lot of coastal elites have no idea what they're talking about when they speak about the extreme danger of being different in middle-America.

Here's a counterargument (counter-anecdote, really): I'm different in other ways (foreigner), I found living in middle-America a nightmarish experience of prejudice and outright hate. Being cat-called once is child's play compared to living in the mid-west while foreign.

Agreed.

One can be gay (and of the white majority) and not broadcast it, whereas when you're not-white, you're foreign. You can speak with a flawless accent, play varsity baseball, drink Bud at the bar and cheer for the home team, but in the eyes of the bigoted, you still aren't anything beyond your skin color.

This is not to discredit what other discriminated people have to undergo, but as someone who is not white, there's an extra burden to living in middle-America.

Have you lived in middle america?

Grew up Illinois. Got into one fight middle and one in high school because people taunted me over my race (I'm Chinese).

And while roadtripping throughout the Midwest, sometimes people would toss racial epithets at you in the most indirect way; e.g. Just a mutter as they pass you. The only time I felt directly threatened was while stopping for gas in rural Indiana, and again that was with a group of teenagers who probably had nothing better to do.

Even with all this, I don't regret my upbringing in the Midwest. It's fostered an understanding of the inequalities that exist in America. And as I get to the age of potentially having kids, I wonder if I want to move back to let them experience this as well.

Normal looking, upper middle class Christian white man here from Fort Wayne, IN who's lived in 4 major cities Boston, Philadelphia, WAsh DC, and St. Louis and a mix of others Augusta, GA, Princeton, NJ, Ann Arbor, MI.

City vs. not is the key distinction. Racists/sexists/etc. exist in equal numbers in less populated parts of every state. Interestingly, the immigrants who primarily live in cities tend to be similarly racist/sexist as the Americans in less populated parts. My point is to challenge the idea that middle america is relatively bad.

We can clearly see that's your point, but it's a mystery to me why you think your experience outweighs that of the parent (though the nonsequitor about immigrants offers a depressing clue).

Did I say my point was better than the parent? I didn't. They're point is equally valid. I was simply arguing my case.

As for the "non sequitur", it was exactly NOT a non-sequitur. What I meant is to point out an unfortunate irony thats it's human nature to discrimate. The people in middle america were once immigrants. The current immigrants in cities in my wide variety of experiences have surprised me with their discriminatory tendencies. I've been at several well known universities so it's not an education thing either.

> My point is to challenge the idea that middle america is relatively bad.

Gotcha. I'm glad you're challenging me because it's making me refine my thoughts.

Middle America often denotes the Midwest, but this is the wrong connotation and I shouldn't have used it.

Middle America is any region in America where there's a stagnation of thought due to lack of new people and new ideas. Urban or rural, Midwest or coastal. And next time, I'll use the term "homogenous towns" to avoid this ambiguity over geography.

Thank you.

> I think a lot of coastal elites have no idea what they're talking about when they speak about the extreme danger of being different in middle-America.

I suspect you are undervaluing the impact a region's law and culture can have. Being murdered is not the only danger of being trans in America.

LGBTQ individuals are the single largest target for hate crime. [1] Trans women, in particular, seem to draw both violent crime, hate speech, and legislation that makes their lives considerably more difficult.

Trans individuals more frequently suffer secondary health impacts simply for fear of using public restrooms. They may not use a restroom when they need to, or deliberately dehydrate themselves to avoid having to use a public restroom.

Even without violence, being the target of aggressive/hateful language when in public is not something anyone should have to deal with. It's an emotional burden that can lead to other emotional and physical symptoms of anxiety and depression.

When legislation like NC's HB2 goes on the books, it can make trans people targets. (See instances where people stood outside public restrooms 'checking' for trans individuals, or in Washington state, where the I-1515's initiative chairmen encouraged men to follow women into the restrooms to deliberately make them uncomfortable so they'd sign the initiative.)

The danger is definitely there, across many axes. Some of the dangers are subtle, and may not be obvious on casual inspection, but it definitely feels like there's extreme danger even in communities as liberal as Seattle -- let alone in areas where there's less tolerance.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/16/us/hate-crimes...

This is all oriented around metropolitan areas, which are often much more liberal than the surrounding areas. I'm not sure this speaks the region as a whole.

However, you're also understating the threat of violence against trans people[1]. My best friend in the world had their world turned upside down after a murder in Philly[2]—a city with a strong queer community, one of the strongest I've ever seen. I don't think you're truly safe anywhere at the moment as a trans person.

Finally, there's this super depressing article on wikipedia about trans murders specifically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_tran...

[1]: http://www.thetaskforce.org/static_html/downloads/reports/re... (You really have to dig, but I recommend eyeballing the entire report to get a full idea to the extent to which trans people are subject to discrimination, harassment, and assault).

[2]: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Transgender-Rally-...

The difference is that North Carolina has HB2 and Massachusetts does not. Cities are great and all, but don't forget that state and federal laws take precedent over city ordinances.

Building on this, see, for example: http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/non_discrimination_laws

(Note the states with little warning triangles, indicating that the state has passed legislation that prevents cities or other municipalities from enacting their own non-discrimination rules.)

For others like me who were not aware of HB2: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/ar...

HB2 is ridiculousness.

Everyone I know that lives in NC is upset about it. The only bright side is that it hasn't been and can't be enforced.

Many don't know that HB2 also originally included provisions that took rights away from workers to sue for discrimination. Months after, they took that part out, but left the rest of HB2 intact. They could have just killed it, but the legislature was just too fucking stupid.

In 2010, NC got the first Republican majority in their state legislature since 1900. They created HB2 in response to something completely innocuous, went completely off the rails, and have been in no way actually representing NC's citizens.

Despite the NC Republicans Gerrymandering several years ago, they should be soundly defeated in all elections in the near future. It just won't be soon enough.

As a counter anecdote, I'm from the Midwest and one of the biggest boons about moving from Metro Detroit to the Bay Area is that I don't get harassed in the street for being visibly gender non-conforming anymore. I very much agree with GP, being able to live in a liberal city is one of the biggest bonuses of tech being huge in the Bay Area.

There's socially liberal islands in my home state, like Ann Arbor, Ferndale, and to a lesser extent Grand Rapids, but get too far outside of those towns and you'll have people asking you to leave their store because you're holding hands with your same-sex significant other, yelling slurs at you out of their car windows, telling you unprompted that they're going to pray for your soul, etc. I have a friend that was exorcised and then disowned when he came out, my high school principle gave me a talk about how me being out was reflecting negatively on the school and I needed to change my wicked ways, etc. It's a huge load off my mind to be somewhere where it's a non-issue.

Anecdotal: a friend of a friend, of Middle Eastern origin, had a gun shown to him at a gas station in some town in Texas, followed by "you do not belong here."

As for myself, I'm a Latino immigrant and as much as I'd like to know a lot of America, there are places I'm just afraid to travel to.

In Texas a gun is just a conversation starter.

I can't say for sure about Trans issues locale to locale, however as a Boston/Seattle person I was horrified at the pervasive loud and very publicly accepted levels of racism and homophobia in most of the South and parts of the Mid-West.

Compared to Boston?

I'm a white person from the pacific northwest, and Charleston SC is just ridiculous. It's extremely racist (you would not believe the things that the local white population say when there's no minorities around), xenophobic and reliably voted for Strom Thurmond and Lindsey Graham, two of the most race-baiting bible-thumping red state panderers on earth.

If you're going to move to a "tier 2" / "tier 3" size city, stay out of the bible belt. Unless you're into that sort of thing.

I'd argue that white people in the Pacific Northwest are thinking much of those same things - in the South they just say them out loud.

Think about it, how racially integrated is the Seattle (or Portland) metro exactly?

> I think a lot of coastal elites have no idea what they're talking about when they speak about the extreme danger of being different in middle-America.

Pretty much everyone in this thread takes issue with that statement, but I've got a question that hasn't been raised yet: what exactly does "elites" mean in this context?

I agree. I lived in Cambridge, MA for 12 years. Now I live in St. Louis, Mo. It's better here in many ways. Most people I encountered in the east coast have no understanding of how it can be not bad in a place like St. Louis, let alone better by measures they care about.

Wait someone lived in NYC and was cat-called only ONCE? Most women are cat-called or otherwise street harassed in NYC on a regular basis. I base this on talking to my friends who live in NYC and my experiences visiting.

I believe you'll find that north carolina is on the coast.

I believe you'll find that north carolina isn't considered "elite" by anyone but alabamians