My brilliant friend Anna McCarthy is writing a fictional account of Thorny Acres (now a series of short stories, soon to be a novel), co-housing for Difficult people. Her stories are simultaneously deep dives into the psychic life of vexed social relations, and absolutely hilarious. I swear nearly every character is partly based on me. Because I am indeed Difficult in her sense, and I choose many of my friends precisely because they too are Difficult.
The use of this term can be confusing. It is frequently an invidious epithet, used to demean and discredit people who are principled, forthright and too direct for the comfort of more powerful or more compromised others. In this usage, it is often misogynist or aimed at others who are socially or politically marginalized (racialized minorities, queer and trans people, colleagues from working class backgrounds, supporters of Palestinian freedom). In this usage it is a weapon of psychologized political and cultural war. Combined with the epithet “crazy” this kind of labeling can be a very effective tool. I’ve been on academic hiring committees where every single senior woman of color nominated is either not accomplished enough (because she is on so many committees etc. as an institutional and professional token), or if clearly accomplished she is Difficult or Crazy (because of refusal to function as an over-committed token).
But Difficult can also be used to name a very real kind of social disability, not a mental health issue (despite the tag “crazy”) or an instance of non-neurotypical behavior, but a socially situated mode of misperception of the social world. This second usage, McCarthy’s usage, applies to people who are not dishonest or exploitative or mean or hypocritical, but people who say what they think when they shouldn’t—really shouldn’t! There’s some kind of missing social radar. My assessment of those I know in this category is that there is always a history of abusive parents. In addition, there is also often a class and/or racial divide from white bourgeois expectations of “civility,” aka passive aggressive social relations. Direct confrontation can be both productive and a relief from bourgeois manners, but for the Difficult it can become decidedly counterproductive, shutting down valuable, even necessary interactions. Disproportionately these are women, people of color, working class folks in bourgeois environments, queers and trans people too—histories of diminishment and marginalization produce Difficulty. The Difficult also often combine a kind of obtuseness about their impact on others, with hyper sensitivity about others’ impact on us. This combination is, needless to say, a problem for everyone involved.
One particularly vexing dynamic is that their/our Difficulty makes us targets for personal attack, sometimes kind of justified, sometimes not. Forms of shunning can result. This of course repeats childhood patterns and reinforces the Difficulty, enhanced by added rumination and paranoia.
I love the Difficult people—my people—in an abstract way, and often in a real way. I see the dynamics play out everywhere—in faculty meetings, political activist settings. Over the decades I’ve become more self-aware about my own patterns of conflict and regret, and more able to respond helpfully to others with similar Difficulties. But I’m left hoping for an actual Thorny Acres to retire to…….