#but essential categories just always suck. they will always lead you to reactionary conclusions

[communistkenobi]

re: several recent discussions I’ve seen on here about the dangers of bio-essentialism, in the authoritarian personality the authors find over and over again that highly prejudiced individuals (ie those most likely to be fascists) believe very strongly in A) innate human differences that cannot be altered or negotiated, and B) their own personal ability to categorise people based on these differences with a high degree of precision. the highly prejudiced individual can “always tell” when they meet someone who belongs to an outgroup. This discussion is usually framed in the context of antisemitism, with prejudiced people insisting they can always tell when someone is Jewish, that it is impossible to hide.

There is also a section in the discussion chapters of the book about low-scoring individuals - people who are strongly anti-prejudice (or anti-antisemites, as the authors sometimes call them). These people are not just non-bigoted, but take a conscious stance against bigotry and respond with anger when asked leading questions by the interviewers about minorities. like, “what do you think about the Jewish problem in America?” is almost always answered with some version of “there is no Jewish problem,” or “it’s a Christian problem, not a Jewish problem,” which is not an answer to the question so much as it is a rejection of the question’s premise. This is contrasted with the responses from highly prejudiced people, who treat this question as if it’s completely reasonable and outline what they think “the problem” is, though they often attach qualifiers to it (“the Jews aren’t all bad”) to temper their bigotry. Which is to say, there is an understanding on the part of the low-scoring participants of the role rhetoric plays on prejudice - that “just asking questions” is not an innocent, apolitical act, but one that comes preloaded with assumptions on what you think the answers to these questions should be, or the types of answers you think should be produced.

And to place this in another context - the trans panic that is currently dominating right wing discourse - we can observe extremely similar behaviour. This is best exemplified by the common twitter joke of posting a picture of a cis woman and claiming she’s trans, just to watch transphobes reply with all the ways they can “clock” this woman and tell that she is “secretly” a man. and, it’s worth discussing, that bigots frequently and especially define “male” traits as those commonly found in black and brown cis women, that they are especially fixated on white femininity as the measuring stick by which to judge all other women. but we can see the way that this idea of essential difference in humans undergirds all reactionary thought - without essential ontological categories, you cannot advocate for a worldview that argues for the “good” groups to have dominance over the “bad” ones. But they never prove this base assumption! They point to the very fact of variation within human beings - whether that be skin colour, facial features, ability, sexual organs - and claim that these are indicative of some deeper worth (or lack thereof), but proof of that hierarchical view of variation is never provided.

Which is why when bigots claim they’re “just pointing out the facts,” or say shit like “oh so we can’t even say women and men are different now? We have to ignore biology?” this is an inherently bad faith question. They rhetorically marry “variation” with “measure of value,” and force you to now pivot to talking about the fact that like, human beings are different from one another, rhetorically ceding ground to the premise that human variation inherently determines the value of a human being.

And following this logic, the only way for us to achieve a perfectly equal society would be for us to live in a world where every human being looked and behaved the exact same. And like, uh, how exactly would we achieve this? Which set of parameters for appearance and behaviour would we be following? Who gets to decide what those parameters are? The ONLY logical conclusion to this essentialistic thinking is state sanctioned mass death and subjugation programmes, because there is no other way to get rid of ontologically “bad” people. These hierarchies only have value when they are socially and politically enforced. This is why you should be wary of anyone “just pointing out” that human beings have different physical characteristics. They are not pointing out a neutral biological fact about human genetic diversity, or sexual dimorphism.

edit: altered the spelling of anti-Semitism to antisemitism. Apologies for the improper spelling!

#the authoritarian personality #antisemitism tw #transphobia tw #this is not like super novel or anything #but essential categories just always suck. they will always lead you to reactionary conclusions