Do you think it's an apt analogy to compare revealing that you have enormous wealth to coming out as gay?

“Offensive” needs to be retired.

Obviously, it’s easy to find the concept of being rich as isolating and challenging to be ridiculous. But remember that African Americans have found it ridiculous for homosexuals to “compare” their struggles with race and discrimination.

Rather than focus on comparisons or analogies and then getting out a ruler to compare struggles, maybe it’s possible to just acknowledge that life is difficult.

We’ve had threads here on fluther where we unanimously celebrated how much we all loathed the “first world problems” meme. While we certainly all might agree that there are relative levels of suffering among groups of people, it has become obvious that the “first world problems” meme transformed into a tool that was used against people’s legitimate suffering.

Do I find it difficult to imagine that being rich is difficult? Absolutely. But do we know that lottery winners often discover that happiness was as elusive as it was when they were poor? Yep. Do we see famous rich people self-destruct and kill themselves or overdose? Yep.

Am I losing sleep over the suffering of the rich? No. But can I honestly say that I would be better off creating a list of groups and people and ranking them in order of “legitimate” suffering? Absolutely not.

I think this is too easy – the rich just seem such an easy target of derision. And this makes me pause – not because of the particulars or specifics. Rather, it makes the project of comparable suffering suspect. At least to me.

Did I answer your question? Maybe not. Is it an appropriate analogy? Probably not. But being able to make that assessment requires that I exercise an intuition that I am entirely suspect of.

The article refers to households that have assets, not including the primary residence, of 1Million$ or more as uber wealthy. There is a HUGE difference between that and having a billion or more dollars. Lumping them together seems odd.

That said, please tell me you don’t think that being hated by large numbers of people who have never met you isn’t likely to be stressful. That’s really the discussion here.

Not even in the same hemisphere.

@rojo: Why not? Members of both groups are hated and vilified by strangers. The article is not about “how tough it is”, as the OP says, it’s about the similarity of stresses that would lead to needing therapy to cope.

Well, when your hyper-religious parents disown you and kick you out of your home because you admit to being rich, you can complain. Oh, wait, you could just pay to live somewhere else instead of becoming homeless. Never mind.

Yeah, no… Not an okay comparison at all. Rich people were never denied the right to adopt, or get married. Rich people were never killed for being rich. Rich people were never disowned by family or completely seen as outcasts by their entire communities, or told that they’re going to burn in hell for being rich.

This isn’t to say that being rich doesn’t have its own set of difficulties, but give me an f’ing break in trying to say it’s just as hard to be rich as it is to be gay.

Right? “Sometimes it’s awkward to order top shelf tequila when my friends are drinking PBR. I’m going to call my therapist.” Oi vey.

“Retired” needs to be retired from polite discourse.
“I understand that being wealthy can bring its own challenges” @DoNotKnow.

In 2012 the wealth of the top 1% was 8.4 million.
That said, please don’t tell me that you don’t still think being gay is a choice. That’s really the discussion here.

I tend to agree, @rojo. Like being uber rich is something many don’t even realize until puberty and are helpless to do anything about. Being rich in NYC is so analogous to being gay in a small southern town.

Imagine the inconvenience, @Seek, of Walmart heiress Alice Walton having to abandon her $26m 6,346 sq ft New York condo for the $28.7 million retreat on the Brazos River when protesters camped at the NY address.

Even if being gay and being rich were equally hard, @DrasticDreamer, seems like one is a lot easier to avoid than the other?

@ibstubro: “In 2012 the wealth of the top 1% was 8.4 million.”

Keep in mind that I’m a socialist. Not the pretend kind that Sanders is trying to define – I’m for radical redistribution of wealth, etc. Not sure where you’re going with the numbers thing here.

@ibstubro: “That said, please don’t tell me that you don’t still think being gay is a choice. That’s really the discussion here.”

If you wanted to have that discussion, why didn’t you say so? But since you didn’t seem to frame it this way, I didn’t think we even had to comment on it. Of course sexuality is not a choice. Again, I’m not sure if this is directed at me?

Maybe I shouldn’t have jumped in here. I was merely expressing that there are intuitions that or tendencies that we all have when it comes to comparing suffering. All I was expressing is that it tends to be the method of conservatism, and is great at fueling the worst in people. I guess it doesn’t feel good to me. I think the fact of income and wealth inequality is an inherently immoral one. So, I think putting systems in place to greatly reduce or eliminate this is an ethical decision. But to try to rank the suffering of humans is something that I’m not interested in. Do people with MS or parkinson’s disease suffer more? How about African Americans or Latinos in the U.S.? Gay men or women?

If there is injustice, that can be determined without creating a chart of relative suffering. Injustice demands action. But on a personal level, I don’t want to enter the intellectual and emotional world of conservatives and the right by engaging in this type of dick measuring. It’s a reactionary tool, and it personally doesn’t feel good. I have plenty of compassion to go around. When I decide to start limiting my compassion based on suspect calculation projects that measure relative suffering, it doesn’t end up increasing my compassion elsewhere – it just brings my total compassion level down.

And I did react the way I did because my first instinct was to say, “F*ck that. Rich shitwhores are suffering? What in the living f*ck?”. But then something didn’t feel quite right. And I realized that my suspicion of this initial reaction was probably justified. And that gives me pause.

So, maybe I shouldn’t have jumped in here because I’m probably discussing something different altogether.

Likely you’re just discussing your own agenda, @DoNotKnow.
As usual.
Carry on.
Likely you’re just discussing your own agenda, @DoNotKnow.

No, it is not an apt analogy. Whatever difficulties may or may not come along with revealing their economic status, the wealthy still maintain an incredibly privileged position in society (rendering virtually all of the rage against them entirely impotent). Coming out as gay, on the other hand, means more than subjecting oneself to the hatred of a select group of people. It means doing so in a society that privileges heterosexuality (and giving up the protections that come along with letting people assume you are straight). We don’t have to even broach the question of whether the respective difficulties are comparable in order to recognize that there is an important difference of context here.

@DoNotKnow “Offensive” isn’t the same as “offended.” Anyone can be offended by anything, which is why registering one’s offense is often seen as silly. But to call something offensive is to make a claim about the thing itself, not one’s feelings about or reaction to the thing. It is to say there is something bad about it that any right-minded person should be able to see. And indeed, this is (probably) what most people mean when they say that something offends them—that they think it is offensive. It is only an infelicitous use of words these days because we live in a world where many seem to be professionally offended. But that’s why we must always be careful to read according to the principle of charity.

As for Sanders, he is not a fake socialist. He is a very real democratic socialist, which just happens to be a rather distinct position from being a socialist in the more traditional sense. It’s not Sanders’ fault that most Americans have no idea what various political philosophies are called. In fact, if his proposal to make college free succeeds, he could be responsible for bringing about much greater knowledge in that area. So while I agree he is no socialist, it must be pointed out that he has never claimed otherwise. He has also been quite vocal about what his actual position is and the fact that it is not socialism.

Having read through the article, I am in only part agreement (this is where I am sure you cock your Glocks and get ready to fire back), I think the comparison is wrong because it doesn’t do enough to personify the plight of the uber wealthy. I cannot see how gays can claim offense, maybe a decade ago but not today. A man can be a man, turn woman, and be the toast of the town, II can’t see that of the 1% unless they are giving away all their money to “buy” the respect of those who are in debt living over their means or too lazy or uneducated to glean the time of income to allow them to live large. The problem is too many Americans want to live large now before actually obtaining the means to do so, and crying under the amount of bondage they put themselves under to have those extras they could not pay off out right, who forced them to buy that bass boat, RV, diamond bracelet, or extra 5 pairs of Prada pumps? Growing up I bought into the ”Uncle Tom” mentality when someone got enough money to leave the hood they did. I understand now why, those who still have not obtained would expect those who go ahead to pay for nights out, always loan money, bail out emergencies caused by others because of their poor planning. You would never know who was really your friend, or the friend of all your money. That is why I see the wealthy as only wanting to mingle and marry the wealthy, if both of you are bringing millions you don’t have to worry about being ”Mike Tysoned” by some gold digger. No one is going to ask of gays their goods and get indignant if they are rejected. Certainly you are not going to insult gays like you can the wealthy and perpetrate lies on them as the wealthy and get away with it. Do you think a bunch of people would be allowed to picket the home of a prominent gay leader or activist the way they are demonizing that Walmart heiress or any other wealthy person? In reality the wealthy are one of the last whipping boys out there, maybe a hogs breath in front of child molesters, politicians, or lawyers, not necessarily in that order.