Late last summer I stood with a small group of women in a Hudson Valley backyard, the last of the afternoon’s sunlight streaming over the hilly tree line. As we sipped our drinks, one friend mentioned a bit of news that caused the others to cheer—maybe it was about Israel; maybe it was transgenderism. Or Donald Trump, or Covid policy, or Black Lives Matter, or any of the other electric issues of the day. Whatever it was, I had an entirely different opinion on the matter than everyone else appeared to have.
This left me with a choice: Do I speak up and risk alienating myself and infuriating everyone there? Or do I say nothing? I chose the latter, as I often do. I smiled woodenly and nodded along as the group happily agreed on a stance I thought was hurting individuals and damaging society, and then I drove home, muttering to myself, saying all the things I would have liked to have said in person, irritated, stewing, and frustrated.
It’s been a few years now since I stopped talking freely among friends and family. I am the daughter of two leftist activists, and spent 15 years of my adult life happily living in uber-progressive Brooklyn. In these environments, I was often just on the edge of expected opinions, but even my most eccentric observations were firmly within the boundaries of the left. I never really seemed to bother any of my family, friends, or co-workers.
But by early 2020, something had changed. I had been rethinking my views, wanting evidence that various progressive policies—many of them new and quite radical—were effective, and finding little or none. At the same time, everyone I knew seemed to be transforming into warriors for the exact ideas I was critiquing. The pressure to conform ratcheted up.
