Sometimes it seems to me that if you announce to the world that you’re, say, a “self-admitted sociopath” or a misanthrope or a separatist, and you use the rhetoric of sociopathology or misanthropy or separatism to advance your causes of, say, sex-worker rights or recognition of women as human beings… that you’re going to encounter quite a bit of, um, resistance. Or resentment. Or misunderstanding. Or exclusion.

Which is fine. Sociopaths, misanthropes, and separatists expect and perhaps demand resistance, resentment, misunderstanding, or even exclusion. And so when they get it they’re happy. Indeed one gets the impression sometimes that when such individuals detect acceptance or adoption of their positions they flee extremeward… sometimes further than their own comfort zones… in order to re-establish the adversity their self-identity demands.

And that’s fine too. Just yesterday… somewhere on Twitter or a post or in a PDF or comments to someone else’s post or somewhere else… someone I wish I could identify raised the perfectly valid point that almost by definition change is not initiated by well-adjusted people. So thank goodness for misanthropes, sociopaths, and separatists!

The problem arises, I think, when one confuses rejection of one’s unpleasant or adversarial rhetoric or personality with rejection of one’s cause. Because after a certain point ones audience can begin to entertain the same confusion. With the result that in addition to closing their ears to one’s asshole behavior they close their ears to one’s perfectly legitimate cause.

Update: See also risk identified by Ezra Klein re: Sen. Inhofe as conservative id rather than crazy uncle.