#pettyhatreds — Public Fediverse posts

this morning's rogue thoughts...

"Petty Hatreds"

back in the days of usenet, i used to argue with right wing nut jobs on alt.politics.homosexuality. it was the early 90s and i wasn't comfortable with labeling someone a "homophobe." i was younger then and much more pedantic than i am now. i thought "heterosexist" was more accurate, but even that didn't quite capture the rhetoric of anti-gay buffoons who couldn't think outside of jerry falwell's talking points. nor did it catch on as a popular term. so i started referring not to them as persons but to their attitudinal expressions, which i called "petty hatreds."

using that phrase didn't derail the focus into semantic nonsense about who or what they were "afraid" of (remember...the 90s). it revealed to them what they were doing in a simple, direct way. they couldn't argue with it because even they recognized its accuracy--though i'm sure at the time they considered their homophobia as justifiable and monumentally important, not petty.

#PettyHatreds dislodges the essentialism at the foundations of their thinking. it reveals their supremacist attitudes, not as the bedrock of a black and white reality, but as a choice in how to treat their fellow humans. moreover, it shifted the focus from queer folk having to justify our own existence to them having to justify their choices.

i'd like to see people use "petty hatreds" more widely when confronted with so-called conservatives who disparage, denigrate, or dehumanize others, especially marginalized peoples. it disarms their defensiveness at being called a homophobe, transphobe, antisemite, misogynist, et cetera. "petty" reframes their hateful expressions as frivolous, unserious, and immature--as something easily dismissed. it provides a cognitive prompt for them to re-evaluate their expressions of hatred--where they have to question their culturally programmed, black and white worldviews. it makes them question themselves and their motivation--"am i really being petty?"

if they want to persist in expressing their petty hatreds, the first thing they need to explain is why it is not petty--a difficult burden. it also provides the so-called moderates with a ready-made cognitive schema for dismissing their extremist rhetoric as unserious and immature rather than accepting inculcated cultural biases. it might even provide a cultural inoculation against whatever pipeline into which the youthful among us are about to descend.

what other potential effects do you think the label of #PettyHatreds might have? other thoughts? 🤔

#RogueThoughts #PettyHatreds #Discourse #PoliticalDiscourse #ReframeTheDiscourse #Xenophobia #Homophobia #Transphobia #Misogyny #AntiSemitism