Can We All Just Talk To Each Other Please?

We might be doomed if we don't. On fringe groups, the media and how safe spaces can endanger us all.

Hi there, this is Sanjiv. Apparently you’re supposed to introduce yourself with each post, so here goes. This is a newsletter about subcultures and the issues they raise. Every society is defined by its edges. You’ll see original reporting, new takes on archive stories I’ve written for GQ, Esquire, the Telegraph and others. And sometimes, the occasional commentary piece, like this one.

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It’s never been particularly easy to talk to fringe groups. They’re fringe for a reason. But it’s also never been quite this hard.

In the aughts, I remember approaching the Minutemen, or the polygamists or the Sons of God, a born again biker gang. And they were frosty at first, reflexively suspicious of the “mainstream media” and its George Soros agendas. But we always got past it. Emails became phone calls became in-person chats over coffee. Bit by bit we got to know each other as individuals, rather than as vaguely oppositional groups. And, by the end, the stories would come pouring out on both sides, often at dinner. A beautiful thing.

These days however, the them-and-usness is harder to crack. Emails either disappear into the void, with all the other unanswered emails—so much thwarted connection rattling around in the cloud—or they beget more emails, long narratives of persecution that unspool like a fax machine. The guard stays high. In-person is rare. And dinner is a pipe dream.

I find this a shame—of course I do, I’m a reporter—but not just for me. For everyone. For America. Because this dynamic is what ails us as a society. And we need to fix it if we want to beat fascism.

The Prefects of Sneeze Province

A case in point: the sneeze fetishists. (Did you read my piece? You should!) I explored this world back in 2011 and revisited it just a few months ago for this newsletter. Each time I started out the same way, by posting a request for interviews on the Sneeze Fetish Forum (after seeking the blessing of the moderators). But the responses were very different.

In 2011, folks were mostly open and friendly, interested that I was interested and happy to get on the phone and have a natter. Cautious at first, sure—they knew there were some negative stereotypes out there—but also hopeful that, with the right kind of coverage, they could chip away at those stereotypes, and edge closer to a more harmonious world in which they’d be more accepted and not have to hide away in secrecy.

In 2025, however, this friendly contingent was largely outnumbered and outposted by a new, more cynical, generation. They arrived with big block paragraphs and sand for the gears. Lecture Mode Activated. HR energy. These self-appointed Prefects of Sneeze Province would tap away at a metaphorical chalk board as they explained at length not only why they would decline my request, but why everyone else should too. I’m going to paraphrase:

1. “This forum is our safe space, so for you to be here at all is a violation.”

This sentiment prompted a brief discussion as to whether the forum should be removed from Google search altogether so as to exclude outsiders completely. Then someone piped up, “um… how will new members find us?” We’re so accustomed to exclusionary safe spaces by now, we may have lost sight of the downsides—more on that in a minute.

2. “The media are awful, there’s nothing to be gained.”

Every reporter has heard this a zillion times. And it’s true, we do work in the wake of shyster hacks who lie and burn their sources. But #notalljournalists. I know how that sounds, but there really is a lot of good work out there, as everyone knows. In all my years, I’ve met some lazy journalists for sure, but never anyone with a malicious agenda. The vast majority are motivated by genuine curiosity and an ambition to do good work. Thankfully, in this case, a couple of brave commenters dared to say as much, posting that it was actually an article or podcast that first explained their fetish to them, introduced them to the community and changed their lives forever.

But then came the final nail:

3. “Even if you’re fair and the piece is positive, there might still be readers out there who draw the wrong conclusions. Any exposure carries the risk of blowback.”

OK, it’s technically true that a glowing piece could still lead to negative fallout, because haters gonna hate etc. It’s not impossible. After all, anything can go wrong in life. There’s always a downside if you seek it out. But what a bleak outlook! I should have countered with a bottle of Prozac. Instead, I went to lie down.

Here we have a niche group—I’ve picked the sneezers, but the same applies to furries and others—that feels so unfairly treated by “the mainstream”, that it has chosen to withdraw. Understandable. But a decade ago, groups like this believed that the situation might be improved, by a positive article, say. Today, the needle swings the other way. Fringe groups have largely given up on being accepted or understood, or bridging the gap between “them” and “us”. They’ve lost hope that society can ever be truly integrated or that we can live in harmony at all.

The Harm Spectrum

So what’s going on here? It doesn’t compute on the face of it. To be this disillusioned with the media would make sense if the media had grown crueler over the past decade, but the opposite is true—marginalized groups are treated with more deference than ever. Ask any furry about why they’re so down on the media and they’ll typically cite two examples that have become a part of furry folklore at this point—an episode of CSI (“Fur and Loathing”), and a lurid piece in Vanity Fair, that mocked and trivialized their fandom. But they both date back to the early 2000s. Since then, coverage has been so positive it’s practically celebratory—and often willfully blind to the fandom’s darker corners (the pendulum always swings past the center). And yet furries are arguably more antagonistic to the media now than ever.

One of the defining paradoxes of the social justice era is that it arose at a time when things were actually getting better. Just as society was becoming less racist, less homophobic and generally less hostile to minorities, the progressive left took to the streets clamoring for safe spaces and trigger warnings. It was as though a well of grievance had been stored up from an earlier, more grievance-worthy time and was only now being vented on the most progressive culture in our lifetime. Not a perfect world by any means, but measurably better than before, and improving. Most of the major battles had already been won—like civil rights and gay marriage—so this fresh outrage had nowhere to go but to smaller and more abstract complaints like hurt feelings and emotional labor, which in turn became invested with disproportionate emotion. And to justify the overreaction, it became routine to exaggerate the alleged harm.

This word ‘harm’ kept coming up as I went back and forth with the sneezers. How my joining the forum was causing harm. How my article would cause harm. And it’s not clear what they meant. ‘Harm' is one of those words, like ‘trauma’, that has been so watered down that it now drifts on a spectrum between being asked “where are you from?” and actual genocide. Emotional harm is subjective, a function of fragility, and this semantic loophole has allowed an entire generation to wildly overstate its suffering, or even fashion it out of whole cloth, confident that they’ll be showered with attention and sympathy. Like a society-wide case of Munchausen’s disorder.

Better Late Than Never

It may seem unsporting to have a pop at progressives now that MAGA is on the rampage and we’re all watching the news through our fingers. Since the election, all too many liberals have adopted the position that now is not the time for recriminations because the world is on fire and we need to #unite and #resist. But if not now when? We can’t afford to make the same mistakes again. Democrats need to chart a new course, and it’s clear that wokeness, for want of a better word, was one of the key reasons we lost the election. It galvanized MAGA and fractured the left, making us sound like Portlandia, as Pete Buttigieg said. If we want to build a coalition big enough to oust the fascists, a full-throated rejection of wokeness might be the most urgent business at hand.

We have a way to go. While the sneeze scolds lectured me about the potential trauma of a positive article, ICE agents were out in the streets rounding up civilians and deporting them to Guantanamo. These things are causally related. There’s a straight line between woke extremism and Trump’s victory. Between pretend harm and actual harm. And yet in polite society we’re still expected to dignify these arguments, pretend they have substance.

Can we stop now? This is my ask.

Sometimes politeness comes at a cost. We kept quiet during the Woke Years, when the new left made the absurd choice to lionize fragility just when the moment called for toughness. With MAGA massing at the gates, sharpening its spears, campus progressives embraced emotional hemophilia. As though we might defeat Trumpism with tiny screeching violins. Still, we went along with it. And here we are.

So my message to the sneezers and other marginalized groups, to everyone, is that this fearful hunkering down in identity groups is not serving us. Let’s not clutch so tightly to our overblown narratives of harm. Or be too quick to deplatform or write people off. Instead, let’s try to emerge from our bubbles and engage with outsiders. Speak plainly and look for common cause. Move beyond the peculiarities that keep us apart. That’s what we need right now. We need to come together.

I’m not saying that exclusionary spaces are all bad. It’s clear that HBCU’s or women’s colleges, say, have helped those groups flourish when the wider culture hasn’t valued them. But they’re a means, not an end. A bunker not a home. A stepping stone to reintegration. When they become permanent, they strengthen division and cement that hopelessness I was talking about, the sense that we can never get along. But we can! The goal isn’t to remain separated by identity, but a society in which exclusionary spaces are unnecessary. Might never happen, but the effort will fortify us for the trials ahead. We can but try.