How hate is rationalised using irrational arguments
After the death of Sarah Higazi, a queer communist Egyptian activist, many hateful homophobic comments appeared on her memorial photos. We will spare the details of those horrible comments, however it is important to shed light on one particular notion that kept on coming back as a justification for such hatred and lack of empathy: the notion of ‘nature’ (or what is considered to be ‘natural’).
This notion is commonly used to justify homophobic and transphobic claims. However, critics seem to forget that, as humans, we are before anything else: cultural and social beings. We are much more affected by our surroundings and culture than by biology itself. The value given to our body is purely social. It is our culture that gives meaning and value to certain physical traits, as well as the physical interactions we have with one another. Often culture will define how people should behave, how they should dress, how they should eat, how and who they shall love etc. We have also been modifying and marking our bodies since the dawn of times in order to fit cultural aspirations. Our body is, in fact, marked to determine our belonging to a certain community/group/gender (this could be in the way we dress, doing henna, getting certain types of haircuts, removing body hair etc.). Societies also tend to condemn nudity and pressure people to cover their body with clothes (but apparently that’s considered natural). The way we live is constrained by social norms that have little to do with ‘nature’. Almost everything around us is socially constructed from our home, to our body, to the food that we eat. Indeed, as human beings we have even been modifying the way we shelter and the way we eat. For example, we no longer use our body to chase (and eat) but rather use tools and invented what is called ‘gastronomy’. As Bourdieu describes: it is the taste of luxury
“which shifts the emphasis to the manner (of presenting, serving, eating etc.) and tends to use stylized forms to deny function.”
We have created new ways of living as well as norms and ‘values’ mainly to be distinguished from other living creatures. We explicitly distanced ourselves from ‘nature’.
However, taking the ‘natural order’ as an excuse is a common strategy used by certain people to maintain patriarchy and other oppressive systems alive. In fact, in order to uphold the patriarchal organisation, people tend to ‘naturalise’ it, in other terms making it appear as ‘natural’ and as the only way of being. Humans tend to transform history into nature; in other terms making tradition and ‘previous practices’ appear as ‘natural’ and therefore unquestionable. People also stigmatise the ones who seek to create a change by labelling them as ‘abnormal’. This stigmatisation is done specifically to exclude people who do not conform while also hoping that the discrimination they will face due to this stigma will eventually crush them.
The sociologist, Erving Goffman talked about the dangerous impact of stigma and discrimination:
“By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.”
Furthermore, it seems like the same people who would condemn queer people on the basis of ‘nature’ would be the first to exploit the planet’s resources without shame or apology. This can be verified by taking a simple look at how the typical political right wing (mainly in western societies) think: they often preach a bigger and even total freedom to big polluting firms while at the same time condemning and creating barriers for queer people in their battle for a decent living. Some people uphold patriarchal and capitalist values for the sole purpose of keeping the distribution of power unbalanced and unequal. It has nothing to do with nature or religion. Humans compete over power, they couldn’t care less about nature (If they did care, climate change and pollution wouldn’t have become some of the biggest issues the world is now facing)
Adding to that, some of the comments also mentioned procreation; in the sense where a gay couple cannot have kids therefore their love should be condemned. It is quite funny how people always mix between love and procreation. In most movies even ‘scientific’ documentaries there is this tendency to put love, sex and procreation in the same ‘package’. However, we believe it is pretty clear that we can be in love without necessarily wanting to (or being able) to have kids, we can have sex without necessarily be in love, we can be in love without necessarily wanting to have sex and we can have sex without necessarily wanting to procreate. Using procreation to justify why some people should not be in love is founded on completely false assumptions about what love, sex and procreation are. Also, having kids is not necessarily linked to procreation, adoption exists and family structures are quite diverse. For example, in the case of the Mosuo, an ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China (close to the border with Tibet) they follow a matriarchal lineage in which the role of the ‘father’ is adopted by the mother’s family.
“The grandmother is usually the head of the household… The grandmother plays a key role running the household, helping with child care as well as continuing to help with farming and feeding the family”.
Family structures differ from a society to another which proves once again that the concept of ‘family’ and how we understand it, is a social construction and not something ‘natural’.
On an endnote, using nature, procreation or any other excuse cannot justify hatred. Similar to other emotions, hatred is a feeling that we learn. More precisely we learn how to manifest it and who to direct it against. Often our emotions whether hate or disgust are manipulated by people in ‘power’ and directed towards marginalised communities. It is done by internalising social notions and stereotypes around an identity/ group/ community. It is also about generating control; controlling the bodies of others, crushing them, making them almost invisible. Once again, we are a product of social construction which not only affects how we perceive the world but also how we feel towards one another.
References and interesting reads:
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Harvard University Press, 1984)
Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination (Stanford University Press, 2001)
Erving Goffman, “Stigma and Social Identity”, Understanding Deviance: Connecting Classical and Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2014)
Ting Ji, Jia-Jia Wu, Qiao-Qiao He, Jing-Jing Xu, Ruth Mace and Yi Tao, “Reproductive competition between females in the matrilineal Mosuo of southwestern China”, The Royal Society (Vol.368, 2013)
