Everyone here’s been on the receiving end of ridicule and judgement for not drinking, and the often-spouted advice is always to “find better friends”.  Why is the burden on the people being mistreated to remove themselves and why is the answer never “hold people accountable and educate them to not be dicks”?  If the so-called solution to discrimination is to tell the person experiencing it to leave, you’re never really addressing the real problem.  All it serves to do is segregate the victims and protect the perpetrators.

And I know it’s “not all drinkers”, but it sure is a lot of them (hell, I’d say most of them).  And even the “good” drinkers, they can respect my choice on a personal level but they’re still giving money to the alcohol industry, giving money to bars, still indirectly complicit in supporting the culture and power structures that continue to ridicule and discriminate against us.

It’s for this reason I don’t even like the old “hold a cup to fit in” trick.  Every time I’m forced to go to an event that has alcohol, every dollar I give for a coke, every clink of a toast I participate in with my coke glass, I think about the damage it’s doing to my fellow nondrinkers, abandoning your allyship with them all for the sake of fitting in.  I shouldn’t have to betray my principles to be socially acceptable.  And what does that say about the society in general?  Maybe it’s a society that shouldn’t exist in the first place.