A beef with bullies

Words and words can break your bones and words can really harm you

‘Bigot’ is a word like a rock. Its first and third plosive sounds, and the hard consonant stop of its final t, give shape to its meaning: a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion. There is no softness in ‘bigot’. There are no f’s or s’s. No cosy flesh to make it kind.

'Bigot’ is built for purpose. The word is as rigid as the attitude.

It is so unforgiving, in fact, that I wonder if there’s anyone who wouldn’t mind being called a bigot. The world is large and endlessly surprising, though, so maybe there are people who claim the word without shame. Maybe there are bumper stickers that say ‘Big ups to Bigots’ or ‘Hoot if you’re a bigot too’.

More often than not though, bigots dodge and justify their bigotry. Many bigots are educated and consider themselves sophisticated. They travel to the Mediterranean for their summer holidays, go to the opera, and read fat history books.

Some bigots are famous authors of extremely popular books. Or comedians with shows that reach millions of people.

‘Mage’ by Justine Mahoney (This image is from a postcard I got at Southern Guild Gallery)

Some of these famous bigots particularly like lashing out at trans people.

Is there a more vivid example of bullying’s cowardly instinct to punch down than a famous cisgender person mouthing off about transgender people? To be as rich as Croesus and as well-known as Christ and making ignorant comments about one of the most vulnerable groups of people in all the world would be laughable if it wasn’t dangerous. 

Trans bigots like to say things like ‘trans women are not women’. They argue biology. They bring the entire engine of their evolved cerebrums to a fight about what makes a woman a woman and a man a man.

But even if biology was as fixed as these trans pests would have you believe, why are they even talking about this? What is it to them? It is nothing to them. They are just bigots who are also bullies.

They could be rude about dictators, crypto currencies or rich people whose employees live on the bread line, but they choose to use their energy to dump on a people with very little social power. People who have enough problems without having their existence questioned by powerful loudmouths with large followings.

I thought about the on-going verbal attacks on trans people recently, because one of South Africa’s most famous exports, Charlize Theron, made a throw-away comment about the Afrikaans language.

People got very cross. Why would she use her international stage to diss a language so many people speak? Does she not understand her power, some asked. And I wondered whether the same people have ever worked themselves into a froth about celebrities saying mean and stupid things about trans people.

I don’t want to make an argument about Afrikaans here. I have a different point to make: Afrikaans will not suffer because a Hollywood actress said only 44 people speak it. Afrikaans will continue to hold its steady course even though it is no longer a language that is backed by financial and political power like it was when it was a crucial tool of racial and cultural oppression in South Africa.

But, when famous people who are not trans speak about trans people in a way that questions their validity, identity or existence, they are causing suffering. They are using their power to spread derision. They’re saying it’s okay to question, undermine and even mock certain people. It is a verbal violence that they conveniently forget is often translated into physical violence.

Not long ago, I covered a story in which a gay writer wrote an opinion piece calling transgenderism an ‘ideology’ and saying that the science on gender was ‘not settled’. I wondered if he didn’t think his piece in a respected publication might be harmful to trans people. I didn’t find his response satisfactory. It was along the lines of ‘I’m sorry if I hurt their feelings but’, which is not an apology at all. Nor recognition of his power to do harm.

I found it peculiar that a person who belongs to a social group that, until very recently, was roundly vilified in the West and still lives in mortal fear in some countries, would extend the kind of ‘rational’ argument that has was so often used against same-sex relationships.

That sort of rationality has been used to justify slavery, land grabs, and the denial of political franchise, education and dignity for certain groups in society. That sort of self-aggrandising rationality, which figures itself the purest and only form of apprehending differentness, belongs to Empire and Colonialism, eugenics and missionary work.

It is outdated, and it is ugly in every aspect. It’s the sort of reasonableness that wears cufflinks, goes to church and collects blankets for the poor in winter.

It's a rationality that would splutter indignantly if it were called bigoted.

Arguing about the validity of someone’s right to dignity and respect based on biology, is in my view, an attempt to decorate the turd of bigotry with the flowers of logic.

Love,

K.

PS: You might want to watch this sweet and gentle short movie, which is tangentially related.