Categories of hate
Saw a post today about kids being a good choice for those who got into parenting via informed consent. On the surface, a nice enough idea. Made me slightly uneasy, but nothing settled enough to comment. (The vast majority of the planet is not here because of informed consent. And while yes, we have a population problem--or rather, a resource distribution problem--the answer is not "only those with a college education and a couple of parenting classes should have children.") I probably wouldn't have noticed, except I've been reading various comments about "radical feminist" views, including the notion that the vast majority of m/f sex is "probably rape," which leads me to wonder how the radical feminists think the world should be populated in the future.
But that's a kind of parenting meta that I can hash out some other time. (Someday, I will do the incredibly raging and accusatory anti-"childfree" rant. For the nonparents on my f'list: Got no problems with nonparents. But if you intend to be around in 20-30 years, and you want people to be ringing up your purchases and making clothes for you to wear... don't diss parenting. Someone's got to raise the people you want waiting on you--or tending to your medical needs--in a few decades.)
What got to me:
Someone replied to the post saying basically, "of course I agree with you that kids are not always the right decision; I hate kids; I not only never want to have any, I can't stand being around them at all. Eww yuck kids. Nasty things they are." (I'm probably exaggerating a bit. But not about "I hate kids.") And that bothered me. Not enough to comment (b'sides, getting into debates about children in a childfree person's journal is rarely a good thing for parents), in part because I couldn't figure out what bothered me. It finally hit me:
If she'd said, "I hate Muslims, can't stand to be around them even for a few minutes, would never date one, wish I didn't have to see them when I go shopping"--she would've been soundly denounced as a horrible bigot. Had she defended her opinion, the wank would've exploded across ten journals. But arguing against hatred-of-children gets rolled eyes and shrugs, and all the non-parents on one's f'list take a polite step away from the "radical" parent.
I don't expect people to denounce her. I don't expect, nor want, similar statements about kids to be denounced. I'm contemplating which categories of people it's considered acceptable to despise based on category alone (children, apparently; convicted criminals, for most people; "the wealthy" in many cases; people who practice vices of various sorts; perhaps other groups), which ones it's socially unacceptable to denounce by category (races, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations), and which are in a fuzzy area (genders--it's okay for a woman to say "I hate men" and for a man to say "I don't understand women"; old people; various disabilities)... and which are considered so irrelevant that people look at you funny if you say you notice them at all.
That'd be the categories with no privilege attached, I believe: zodiac signs, dancers, knitters, geeks, and so on. (My husband has a firm policy of "No [more] pisces roommates." Nobody thinks he's serious about that, because they have trouble believing you could discriminate on the basis of zodiac sign.)
So I'm contemplating how we categorize ourselves and each other, and which categories are considered acceptable to have prejudices about and which ones aren't. Which ones are considered matters of chosen activity and therefore acceptable to draw conclusions from ("I always try to include some non-drivers at my parties; they have such interesting opinions") and which are considered physicall inherent and therefore off-limits for personality assumptions.
And I'm trying to consider these issues from this perspective, I think, to avoid my sense of absolute outrage at the notion that it's okay to hate people, to despise human beings, because they happen to be born 15 years after you were.
(Am leaving this public. I know it could get wanky. To avoid wank, focus on how we categorize people, and why some categories are acceptable to make assumptions about, and why some aren't.)
Comments enabled at matching InsaneJournal post.
But that's a kind of parenting meta that I can hash out some other time. (Someday, I will do the incredibly raging and accusatory anti-"childfree" rant. For the nonparents on my f'list: Got no problems with nonparents. But if you intend to be around in 20-30 years, and you want people to be ringing up your purchases and making clothes for you to wear... don't diss parenting. Someone's got to raise the people you want waiting on you--or tending to your medical needs--in a few decades.)
What got to me:
Someone replied to the post saying basically, "of course I agree with you that kids are not always the right decision; I hate kids; I not only never want to have any, I can't stand being around them at all. Eww yuck kids. Nasty things they are." (I'm probably exaggerating a bit. But not about "I hate kids.") And that bothered me. Not enough to comment (b'sides, getting into debates about children in a childfree person's journal is rarely a good thing for parents), in part because I couldn't figure out what bothered me. It finally hit me:
If she'd said, "I hate Muslims, can't stand to be around them even for a few minutes, would never date one, wish I didn't have to see them when I go shopping"--she would've been soundly denounced as a horrible bigot. Had she defended her opinion, the wank would've exploded across ten journals. But arguing against hatred-of-children gets rolled eyes and shrugs, and all the non-parents on one's f'list take a polite step away from the "radical" parent.
I don't expect people to denounce her. I don't expect, nor want, similar statements about kids to be denounced. I'm contemplating which categories of people it's considered acceptable to despise based on category alone (children, apparently; convicted criminals, for most people; "the wealthy" in many cases; people who practice vices of various sorts; perhaps other groups), which ones it's socially unacceptable to denounce by category (races, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations), and which are in a fuzzy area (genders--it's okay for a woman to say "I hate men" and for a man to say "I don't understand women"; old people; various disabilities)... and which are considered so irrelevant that people look at you funny if you say you notice them at all.
That'd be the categories with no privilege attached, I believe: zodiac signs, dancers, knitters, geeks, and so on. (My husband has a firm policy of "No [more] pisces roommates." Nobody thinks he's serious about that, because they have trouble believing you could discriminate on the basis of zodiac sign.)
So I'm contemplating how we categorize ourselves and each other, and which categories are considered acceptable to have prejudices about and which ones aren't. Which ones are considered matters of chosen activity and therefore acceptable to draw conclusions from ("I always try to include some non-drivers at my parties; they have such interesting opinions") and which are considered physicall inherent and therefore off-limits for personality assumptions.
And I'm trying to consider these issues from this perspective, I think, to avoid my sense of absolute outrage at the notion that it's okay to hate people, to despise human beings, because they happen to be born 15 years after you were.
(Am leaving this public. I know it could get wanky. To avoid wank, focus on how we categorize people, and why some categories are acceptable to make assumptions about, and why some aren't.)
Comments enabled at matching InsaneJournal post.