Social Withdrawal, or Social Rejection?

When those who attend to the matter of those who have withdrawn from society write about them their tendency has been to emphasize the actions of those who have withdrawn, and identify these actions with choices they have made. They gave up on the job market. They dropped out of the "dating pool." They refused to come out of their bedroom, or their parent's basement.

I suppose this is intuitive for those who take the conventional view of things (individualistic, squeamish about the existence of society and its inequalities, not least in the area of power). But, here as in so many other areas of life, that view can be limiting and misleading--overlooking the extent to which those who act in such ways may be coping with choices others made, and in which they could not do much more than acquiesce, which may have them not so much withdrawing as accepting others' rejections. The rejection of potential employers. Rejection in "the dating market" and social life generally. Even rejection by their own families.

After all, it does not seem to be those positioned to "succeed" that take that course, but those who have the most frustration, to go by what the anecdotes and even the statistics tell us. Not the privileged kid with all the advantages who got all the breaks and is now on the "fast track to success" but the kid who never got a college degree is likely to end up playing games in their parents' basement. Not the "eligible bachelor" who walks away from dating, but those whose prospects were much less good. And not the popular kids but the victims of those vigilante enforcers of social life, bullies, who end up hikikomori.

Considering all this one can plausibly see all these persons as having been "shut out" before they became "shut-in." And that seems to me to confirm yet again the value of the sociological approach to the issue on the part of those who want to understand, and help, rather than wring hands and moralize in that way that the real-life Ron Burgundys of the mainstream media love so much.