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Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

Maybe you have more direct experience with this than I do, but I'm not sure I agree. I don't follow the lifestyle the author describes, but I do live in an economically and culturally comparable town in Vermont that's much smaller than Massena. The town is full of gay and lesbian couples, and it really doesn't seem to be an issue. The few racial minorities seem to be well accepted. Religion is a surprisingly small factor.

Political beliefs do divide the town, but national politics are actually less divisive than I've experienced in larger places. Trans folk do have it harder, but we seem to judge the few we have as individuals. I'm sure there are other towns where these things are much less true, but I wouldn't automatically assume it couldn't work in Massena for anyone with the right attitude. I think it would come down to the individual.

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I think Vermont is, in my experience, perhaps more accepting of different identities. I've lived in small towns, and spent plenty of time in small towns. Some have a "don't ask/don't tell" or "live and let live" sense to them. As long as you aren't loud about your identity, you'll be left alone.

But plenty of places will absolutely run you out of town for having the wrong religion, race, or sexual preferences.

I experienced something similar and would posit that small communities accommodate diversity more easily, because you get to know the people, it's no longer "the homosexuals" or "the immigrants" or "the jews", it's "John who works at the coffee shop ".

Clearly this breaks down at a certain size, and it may still suck for people on the minority side tho.

This is not true, in my experience, in rural Indiana. I hear the n word a lot for an area that I have yet to meet a black person. One neighbor was complaining about the California family that moved to town and brought all the drug problems with them, despite our county having been the meth capital of Indiana for years before they moved here. Somehow my first conversation with a friend's mom I met while visiting their rural farm involved how there were no black people in the area. But this is why all anecdotal data should be taken with a grain of salt.

Indiana is known for this though...not every rural area is comparable

Yeah as a trans woman who lived in Vermont for awhile this lines up with my experience. The worst bigotry I encountered was teenagers calling me the f-slur, which is like fine, whatever. I think people dont have a sense of just how massive America is and how different states are culturally.

Honestly it still sucked to be trans in Vermont, it's extremely isolating especially if you dont have a car or live in Burlington/Brattleboro. The reason why so many queer people move to cities is that cities are really the only place queer people can have a semi-normal social life, and not because they're fleeing Westboro Baptist Church style bigotry

Guess it comes down to the individual's attitude either way and what they're willing to tolerate but I wouldn't underestimate the aggressive ignorance you can find out there. Vermont is a short drive from the so-called lesbian capital of the world, one of the few parts of the country where democrats consistently win a majority of rural voters, and is in the most secular corner of the country. It's almost the complete opposite of the rest of rural America.

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