First draft of a maxim

Hello readers,

This piece is me working my thinking out in first-draft format. I don’t claim to have settled my mind on it. I’m open to your perspectives, and would appreciate your comments on this.

I’m specifically inviting contrasting opinions or disagreements if you have them.

Please keep something very important in mind: we may have to stop and reconcile definitions and terminology. Much of what we assume are “disagreements” are not actual disagreements. Instead, it’s that two parties are using the same word but different definitions.

Don’t be surprised or put off, please, if I jump into the comments and insist on reconciling definitions. That matters, and it leads to better conversation, I promise.

First, I’m going to give you my definitions. I want you to understand my thinking before you believe you agree with it, or disagree with it.

”Homophobia, racism, misogyny, transphobia, or any other ‘ism’ “—I contest the common definition of these terms as established through vernacular use. It seems to be that most people see these ‘isms’ as animating forces, as ideas that are powerful on their own, and that affect a person’s mind as if these ideas were conscious agents.

I dispute this.

I also have to clear away some underbrush. Contra the common belief, I do not accept that many of the opinions that are called ‘homophobic” or ‘misogynist’ are actually those things. I don’t believe that they show hatred of gays, or hatred of women. I don’t believe they are actual ‘phobias,’ that is to say, ‘irrational fears.’

I also don’t believe that all of the ‘prejudices’ against gays or women or blacks or trans are actually ‘prejudices.’ That is to say, I do not believe they are unthinking and untrue stereotypes that can be cleared up with facts. Instead, I believe the thoughts that are often labeled as ‘homophobic’ or ‘misogynistic’ are, in fact, accurate observations. The fact that they are accurate, and that it is reasonable to hold them in some cases, drives the members of these groups emotionally insane. That’s when they haul out the moral condemnation.

Yes. I think there are some people who genuinely fear gays based on inaccurate views, and I think there are some people who hate blacks and women genuinely. But here’s the part you probably won’t like very much: I think the incidence of that is vanishingly small. Almost statistically insignificant in most cases.

Instead, I think that claims of ‘transphobia’ or ‘racism’ (substitute whichever other ism you like) are almost always disingenuous weapons used to silence people who don’t fluff and flatter a favored identity group.

Now that that has been cleared away. . . .