"I welcome their hatred" sounds good, but it doesn't work for everyone

Make new friends when you can't keep the old

I lost a building full of friends and colleagues when I left Levi’s. Of the hundreds (thousands?) of people I knew there, I now interact with exactly this many: 1.

Well, make that 2 as of yesterday.

Don’t tell Levi’s. I’m sure everyone there has been told not to speak to me. I’m the enemy.

I imagine I’m whispered about for having lost my mind. I’m outside the bounds not only of friendship, but of basic civility.

Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters, began her speech to Princeton students in December 2021 with a question: What it’s like to be so hated? 

A few years ago, I couldn’t have fathomed how deeply this simple question would resonate with me. And I can tell you, without hesitation: it sucks. 

Now you might say, “Jen you’re not hated! What are you talking about?”

Well, I was pushed out my job because people hated me enough to start reddit petitions to get me fired. Random strangers called the ethics hotline at Levi’s to report me as a walking, talking ethics violation. And my colleagues emailed my boss relentlessly about what a horrible racist I was.

I’ve lost the vast majority of my friends, some family, all of my workmates, my job and my career prospects.

I feel hated.

And I’m not a person who relishes that. I’ve tried to embrace the “I welcome their hatred” mindset but I can’t do it. It still sucks.

Much has been said and written about the dissolution of friendships and the destruction of family relationships during Covid. And all of that has happened.

But there has been less talk about the forging of new relationships and strengthening of old ones. Which, in my experience – thank goodness – is also true.

I think I’m writing this for myself as much as anything. To remind myself what I’ve gained, and think less about what I’ve lost, in the past two years.

Maybe if you’ve lost some friends or even suffered fractured family relationships, this can serve as a little reminder.

Endings can also be beginnings.

Lucky for me, although Twitter can also be a hell-hole, it has also provided me with unending connection to like-minded folks - reasonable, thoughtful, brave humans willing to question the public health edicts that punish the youngest and most disadvantaged the most. 

But the other amazing thing about this new cadre of friends - we don’t all agree on everything! And we still get along, accept each other, and respect each other’s views.

We can disagree vehemently on a particular issue without vilifying each other or casting each other as authoritarian psychos or petty swindling grifters.

Maintaining friendships with people who have differing views is a novelty these days, and one I welcome in my life. I think it makes me more empathetic, kinder, and really in the end, smarter. Engaging with ideas that challenge your own, both opens your mind to a new way of thinking and forces you to examine and defend your own position. You’re forced to move beyond ad hominem attacks, overly simplistic headlines and pat talking points.

My new friends come from a dizzying array of backgrounds. They are vaxxed and unvaxxed. Christians and Jews, atheists and Hindus. Gay and straight and bi-sexual. Parents and non-parents and very soon-to-be parents. Black, white, Asian and Latino. Democrats, Republicans, Anarchists, Libertarians and Independents.

We share the common belief that free speech is central to actual freedom. And that the most powerful thing protecting free speech is more speech. This is what bonds us. And it’s not nothing.

One new friend reached out on Twitter direct message (DM) in October 2020 to ask what to do regarding onerous restrictions being placed on her children in school - double masking + faceshields + distancing + silent lunch. She wanted to know if I’d send my kids under those circumstances.

As a San Francisco public school mom with absolutely zero hope of my kids even getting to go school at all in Fall 2020, I had no good answers.

But I wanted to hang out. I was desperate to bond with a likeminded mom who just wanted normalcy for her kids. I wanted to feel like I wasn’t crazy and I wasn’t a demon. Because I’m not.

We went on to plan rallies together, consult with each other on our op-eds and be regular old friends. We even got on the local news a few times together.

Then there’s my Texas teacher friend. I also met her via Twitter DM. Her kids were living normally by Fall 2020. But she kept fighting for all kids to have what her kids already had. She was standing up for the kids across the country who hadn’t seen or played with another child in over six months, or been in a classroom, and wouldn’t be for close to another year.

She added me to her DM group (who knew these things existed!?) populated mostly with Texans. I’ve never known this many Texans in my life but chatting with these fine folks replaced Friday night cocktails with friends or afternoon coffee breaks with co-workers. I needed the camaraderie.

Then there’s my new smart lawyer friend. I learned only recently that she sent an email to my former boss, the CEO of Levi’s, in the Fall of 2021. I’d only met her once in person when she did this.

We disagree on many things. She’s a Catholic and she is pro-life while I retain my pro-choice view. She’s fair and open, she listens and pushes. And we walk away from any conversation feeling like we both learned something. 

Here’s a snippet of what she wrote to him:

I just want to do something small today to take a stand against what I view as a growing social media mob in an age when we need to be rewarding people for being sincere citizens willing peacefully to stand up for what they believe in, raising flourishing families, doing well and doing good in our workplaces, instead of rewarding social media mobs that try to sink people with increasingly meaningless labels.

She did that, unprompted, with nothing to gain for herself. She never heard back but she shared the email with me months after she sent it, after I was pushed out of the company.

I feel such deep gratitude that people like her are willing to engage in such acts of kindness. It gives me hope.

Some friends are made the old fashioned way. In person. Then sustained over text and social media, if life circumstances change, and distance gets in the way of real-life meet-ups.

I received a text from a former colleague from Levi’s after my resignation. She’d left the company two years prior to me, but we’d stayed in touch mostly via text message. She wrote:

“Proud the voice giver finally protected her own voice.”

We disagree on many things Covid-related, I imagine. It doesn’t matter. That text, on that day, meant everything to me. It kept me going. It still does.

I received this message from another former colleague, someone who disagrees with me on a whole hell of a lot.

People are allowed to have different opinions. We need to be kind to one another. And we should commend people who feel strongly about things and act on their beliefs, even if we may have a different POV. 

We should all try to do a lot more of this. We might learn something from each other.

I will stand in the gap for people with strong opinions. I will defend their right to say a thing, even if I have a different view. 

It’s possible that some of these newly formed friendships, initially forged with a mission - get our kids back to normalcy - won’t last. That we don’t have anything else in common.

But I don’t think that’s true. We all respect the other’s right to free expression even if we disagree on some things. And while we may not plan get-togethers quite as frequently in the future, as we re-engage with our local lives and neighbors, I think there’s a bond that won’t break easily.

On a lighter note, many people have asked me: how can you meet up with random strangers from Twitter? What if one is a serial killer?

To that I say: I am more afraid of real-life “friends” who would throw me under the bus for advocating for kids than of someone I met on social media being a serial killer.

After supporting each other virtually for months on end, meeting people in real life for the first time is an absolute joy.

And really, does AJ (pictured here with my daughter, and my hamster - RIP) look like a serial killer to you?

Mostly, I’m left feeling grateful and encouraged that even at 53, new friends can be made, based on mutual respect rather than tribalism and blind adherence to an ideology.