To love and to cherish
More on this one, because it’s like a burr in my brain.
What is that?
The ACLU doesn’t talk like that about any other oppressed group. Nobody talks like that about any other oppressed group. It’s weird, it’s out of place, it’s infantilizing, it’s excessive, it’s slushy, it makes no kind of sense. Where did this come from? How did we get here?
Normally conversations among adults about justice and human rights talk about…justice and human rights. They don’t talk about loving and cherishing. It’s a massive category mistake to do so. Justice and rights have to be independent of “love” and “cherishing” because they’re abstract and general, not emotional and personal.
In fact this kind of glurge sounds more like evangelical Christianity than it does a secular civil liberties organization.
And on top of the mismatch with a properly adult civil liberties org, there’s the fact that it’s repulsive. Ick. Who wants the world at large to “love” and “cherish” us? That would be creepy. Loving and cherishing is for people who know each other, not for the 7 billion people on the planet.
Why are they doing this? I suppose one guess is that the “activism” has relied all along on hysteria about transphobia, and that nudges people who don’t think very well into condescending sentimental drool about loving and cherishing. You’d think trans people themselves would object to the condescension, wouldn’t you? But no, maybe you wouldn’t, since the whole thing is deeply narcissistic, so the more offers of universal cherishing the better.
A million icks aren’t enough.
Evangelical Christianity, yes, as well as New Age spiritualism, hippie-dippie naivete, and the shallow ecumenism of Unitarian Universalists. It’s the geek social fallacies on the societal scale. It’s the apotheosis of all the empty, pithy platitudes uttered by self-important, self-satisfied, simpering cry-bullies.
It’s the inevitable product of what Nietzsche called slave morality, a morality whose exaltation of weakness, passivity, and self-effacing kindness is easily seen in “intersectionality”. The pessimism of slave morality finds its parallel in the idea that problems like racism are permanent, ineradicable, and central features of society. Even its nihilism is displayed in the instrumental use of history, the revision of stories, and the deconstruction of heroes. Both slave morality and master morality, in their pure forms, are civilizational solvents, capable of dissolving everything that makes a fulfilling life and every means of achieving it.
No, I despise them and wish they’d go back to just being contemptible weirdos like furries. Rarely seen or heard from unless you’re part of their scene.
“Trans people are loved.” Well, no doubt, most of them are loved by someone. It’s a sad life indeed if no one loves you. But as far as I know, none of my loved ones are trans, and so I’m not the agent of that passive.
“Trans people are cherished.” See above.
“Trans people belong.” Again, everyone belongs somewhere, or to something, but really you’ll need to be more specific. Do trans people belong to the Shriners? To the Army-Navy Country Club? Or, more likely, is it different for every trans person?
WaM, maybe they belong to the Force. Darth Vader would fit in well.
I don’t think this is the language of religion: it’s the language of Pop Therapy. It’s also the language of Proper Parenting, of the Anti-Bullying Campaigns, and of Everything We Know We Learned In Kindergarten.
I remember years ago coming across what purported to be feminist models of how a world which threw off masculine, patriarchal characteristics and embraced the feminine wisdom & knowledge of women would be different: kinder, gentler, less competition, more empathy, and discussions in which people and their feelings really, really mattered. I’m starting to wonder if somehow this happened in a fever dream and trans identities became the perfect intersection of feelings, victimhood, and mental fragility for it to work on.
Sastra: Most definitely pop therapy/psych. Just look at how eagerly they employ words like “trauma”.
I think what you’re describing is known as care ethics or an “ethics of care”, which falls under the larger heading of feminist ethical theories. To me, that always seemed too close for comfort to the various forms of “other ways of knowing”.
iknklast,
As an asthmatic, I always identified with Darth Vader.
Nullius and Sastra you’ve reminded me of a couple of incidents (which I think I’ve mentioned here before, but probably a long time ago). Two separate times a young (university sort of age) woman accosted me out of nowhere to ask in an unctuously kind caring concerned voice, “Are you sad?” No reason, no prompt, no cause, just they saw me and decided I looked sad and so thrust themselves on my attention.
It still makes my blood boil just summoning it up. What. the. fuck.
The first time I was sitting on a dock at Green Lake on a chilly grey fall or winter afternoon, enjoying the view and the chilly greyness and my thoughts, and suddenly there was The Angel of Mercy. The second time I was walking down some stairs that are the last stage of going down the north side of the hill I live on. Those stairs are A Clue that this is indeed a Jesus thing, even if it’s also a pop therapy thing: they’re part of the campus of Seattle Pacific University, which is not actually a university but a bible college. And my suspicion of the first Young Person who did it to me was indeed that she was some kind of Christian loony – she just gave off that vibe. I don’t know that I was right, of course, but Fool On Stairs some years later made me feel vindicated for suspecting so.
To be clear – I will offer people help when I can see that they need it – but I absolutely need far more than their facial expression. I’ll offer people help with getting a shopping cart off a bus and similar. I would no more do that “Are you sad?” thing than I would spit on people.
Also note the identical wording. Just those three words. Since one was very likely a godbotherer I think I can assume the other was too.
I was not pleasant to either of them.
So, you made Baby Jesus sad.
I hope so if he’s another “Are you sad?” type.
The funny thing is…I do kind of keep an eye out for people who need a hand. I love giving people a needed hand. But I would never ever EVER ask anyone that horrible intrusive question.
They must be being taught to do this, which is appalling.
Well, it’s a foot in the door for evangelizing. “Are you sad? Then rejoice, for Jesus loves you,” or something.
NiV, whenever I heard “Jesus loves you”, I always want to come back with “Marty Robbins loves you”.
Yes, it’s a foot in the door for evangelizing, but does it not occur to them that it’s also wildly intrusive and rude? It apparently doesn’t – I let both young women who did it to me know how intrusive and rude it is and they both seemed very surprised.
I mean if someone is sitting on a park bench or huddled on the ground crying it might be ok to ask “Can I help you in any way?” (or it might not – the someone might desperately want to be left alone). But just to bounce up to someone and ask “Areyousad?” is announcing “I have looked at your face and concluded there’s something very wrong here.” Shorter: the wannabe evangelists are saying “You have resting bitch face.”
I was doing some grocery shopping recently, with my earbuds in, when some dude came up to me to tell me “Jesus loves you.”
I was more surprised than offended — don’t get much of that in my neighborhood — so the best I could come up with was a sarcastic “thanks for sharing” and moving on.
When I was around 12 an older student said to me, “you don’t smile much, do you?” I replied that, “you haven’t said anything funny yet”.
He looked suitably chastened as the rest of the bus laughed at him. I did feel a bit bad about that but it wasn’t the first time someone had commented the same. I only smile when I am having a good time, and often not even then.
Yebbut “are you sad?” is a whole different thing from “Jesus loves you.” JLY is generic and impersonal, while AYS is personal and in your face, very literally.
Then there’s that whole thing about people feeling free to tell women to smile, which I once wrote a very long post about…
I think that was the first post of yours I read. I had already read “Does God Hate Women?” and was excited to read your blog. When I saw that one, I was just…oh, yes, she’s gotten that too. I hate it.
Back when I was a kid (grade school and high school years) my allergies (pollen) would get quite bad. One of the symptoms was watering eyes. People would pester me with “Why are you crying?” Particularly annoying was that some people wouldn’t believe me when I told them I wasn’t crying, it was allergies. Esecially since the watering eyes were always accompanied by other allergy suymptoms.