Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6869879" data-attributes="member: 4937">@Grandine: Yes, I'm doing a lot of eye rolling over here, but again, perhaps not for the reasons you believe.You have to understand that I have repeatedly in this thread tried to get other participants to view my ideas in a favorable light, by highlighting where how I see things overlaps with how I suspect they see things.  And I have even at times allowed myself to use language which I think they would understand to express these ideas.  But you ought not to assume that in doing so I am in any sense endorsing how that language is generally employed, or that my thinking on this subject comes from a similar place that yours does.Or to put it another way, I'm trying to practice tolerance toward persons, even though I'm actually very intolerant of some of the ideas being discussed here and do not think the ideas deserve any more toleration than I would extend toward someone who came here and started saying that for example, women secretly like to be raped.  So when you push an idea like "intersectionality" to describe what I'm actually thinking, understand that I actually categorize the entire concept of intersectionality in the category of "things that are inherently hateful and immoral". To understand why, consider two different ways of constructing identity: let's call them Idem and Isum.  (Though I'm sure I can come up with better terms if I've given some time to think about it)  Idem says that what makes each person themselves is something individual to them.  You can think of Idem as saying, "I know who you are by looking at your signature, or your fingerprint, or your face.  These things are inherently unique to you."  Under Idem, I can't say I know anything about a person until I actually know the person and get to know their distinct individual traits.Isum says that what makes each person knowable is the list of categories that they belong to.  Isum sees each individual as a list of descriptors that are applied to them.  If you apply enough descriptors to the person, then you know the person.  You can think of Isum as saying that, "I know your identity because you are 6'2", blond haired, brown eyed, Caucasian, male, etc."   If you apply enough descriptors to the person, then you can say, "I know that person."   And the problem with Isum is that while it can be at times useful, it's inherently wrong.  It's inherently wrong because it's not factual.  Each person is more than the list of categories that they belong to.  It's inherently wrong because the list of categories is assigned to the person, sometimes by choice, and sometimes without choice.  It's inherently wrong because the categories that are assigned to the person as important are arbitrary.  It's inherently wrong because it denies the individual worth, individual identity, and individual rights of the person.  Yet "Intersectionality" instead of studying the Idem of the person, seeks to know the person by studying the Isum of the person.  And in doing so it reinforces the creation of the idea of categorization.  The mental mode of thought behind it is inherently racist, sexist, and ultimately hateful and denigrating.  It is also something that ought to be rejected on its own terms.  If you think you know me because I'm a "white male", you are just ignorant.  Full stop.   Because you'd never accept the claim that I know someone else because I knew they were a "black female".  "Intersectionality" maybe useful to certain disciplines, because it formalizes a structure in which academic disciplines receive approval to treat people as statistics and homogenous political units, instead of messy individuals.  But that used to be called racial essentialism about 100 years ago.  "Intersectionality" is just an umbrella terms that makes that sort of thought politically acceptable and allows it to pass in polite company.So no.  I'm not going to budge an inch.  Nor will I stand aside and allow that sort of thought to drag us back into a dark place.  Nor will I stand here and endorse irrational muddled thinking that in one sentence uses identity to mean idem, and then lacks sufficient self-awareness to see in the next sentence it's used the word 'identity' to mean the antonym of idem.  Nor will I endorse using the word privilege to mean its opposite or another sort of Ingsoc lobotomizing of the language.  Such thought needs to be lampooned, rather than celebrated or promoted.</blockquote>

Verification