My Year With Proust - Day 315

Let us leave all those, of one sort or another, who will appear each in his turn, and, to conclude this first sketch of the subject, let us simply say a word about those whom we began to speak of just now, the solitaries.  Supposing their vice to be more exceptional than it is, they have retired into solitude from the day on which they discovered it, after having carried it within themselves for along time without knowing it, longer, that is, than certain others.  For no one can tell at first that he is an invert, or a poet, or a snob, or a scoundrel.  The boy who has been reading erotic poetry or looking at obscene pictures, if the then presses his body against a schoolfellow's, imagines himself only to be communing with him in an identical desire for a woman.  How should he suppose that he is not like everybody else when he recognises the substance of what he feels in reading Mme de La Fayette, Racine, Beaudlair, Walter Scott, at a time when he is still too little capable of observing himself to take into account what he has added from his own store to the picture, and to realise that if the sentiment be the same the object differs, that what he desires is Rob Roy and not Diana Vernon?

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 646-647

The solitaries.  Proust tells us, "Supposing their vice to be more exceptional than it is, they have retired into solitude from the day on which they discovered it, after having carried it within themselves for along time without knowing it, longer, that is, than certain others."  He is continuing his long discussion of homosexuality and society's response to homosexuality.  What is cruel here is that the isolation in this instance is not directly imposed by society, but rather by the individuals themselves, based on their perception of society's seemingly inevitable condemnation.  I've talked before about how I find it so reassuring (at least her in lovely liberal Vermont) that our college students are so accepting of gender issues (and I praise them for this, while also letting them know that my generation was not nearly as enlightened).  Essentially, so many students, more every year, are openly transitioning or at least experimenting along a very fluid gender spectrum, and one of the reasons why this is so increasingly common is the tolerant response of their classmates.  Even if the students are just experimenting, and eventually return to a more "conventional" gender role, it is so wonderful and extraordinary that they've had the freedom to learn and grow.  What a pity it would be if we took a step back.

That said, in other ways an alarming number of our students are solitaries, but for a different reason.  I know I've discussed this before, but please bear with me.  The dream of technology and the Internet was that they were going to be great instruments for leveling and for integration, but it doesn't seem to be playing it that way.  Similarly to how social media is not leading to civilized political debate, but exactly the opposite, the general online world is not having the impact we foretold.  Our students are more and more turning within themselves, to an online world that is easier and more accepting.  And, like Proust's solitaries, it is mostly their own decision; they are choosing their own prison.