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A bigot is someone who
makes essentially irrational judgements about an entire set of people based on flimsy or non-existent evidence, usually as a coping mechanism to deal with some some internal failing of their own psyche of which they are not
fully conscious (if they are conscious of it at all). On occasion the bigotry is brought about by the behaviour an isolated, single example of the set being judged, but this does not exonerate the bigot of bigotry, bigotry is treating the entire class of real people as if they are all examples of the same thing - a much smaller, inhuman, negative, slightly cartoonish mental image of a member of the set, an invented and cognitively "decorated" fetish which exists only to prevent the bigot from facing painful truths about him or herself. To put it as kindly as possible, the reason bigotry is wrong is because it's a false way of looking at "classes" of humanity, people don't all behave in the same way because they happen to have a sexual orientation or a skin pigmentation in common, for example. To put it a little less kindly, bigotry is wrong because it displays a fundamental weakness of spirit and understanding on behalf of the bigot, usually it's symptomatic of an unwillingness to face their place in the world or some aspect of their own lives that has become occulted through deliberate ignorance.
When one is dealing in broad brush terms, in a *moral* way, with a bunch of similar things that are NOT people, generally one goes to some effort to establish a causative connection, usually one that leads in some sort of mechanistically predictable fashion, from whatever the things' defining common factor is to any allegedconsequence of the things' use, existence, behaviour or whatever, that requires a moral response... Hopefully one that is examinable by logical means and can be tested and found, when proposed to exist, to be true or false.
For example, one might decide not to import toys from China at all based on their appalling safety record. A cursory examination of this as a strategy reveals flaws. It is bad business sense to exclude from your resource pool a whole set of useful materials because one example has proved faulty. It is more efficient, usually, to just check the individual examples of whatever it is you want to sell, and sell the ones that work, casting out the faulty ones. This isn't always true, sometimes it's better to just throw out the whole batch, and there are ways of telling whether or not the strategy is economical, there are ways of telling whether or not it's worth doing business with China...
It is dimwitted to treat all things with only one factor in common as fundamentally the same sort of thing, and therefore "necessarily" also possessed of some other factor in the absence of a logical, causative connection between factor 1 and factor 2.
That sentence in bold is quite important in understanding bigotry. Bigotry is essentially a version of a logical flaw, it's all about assuming that because A is blue and bouncy then B is bouncy because it is blue WITHOUT anyone previously having demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt the blueness leads inescapably to bounciness. Prejudging. Prejudice. Pre - before, judice - judging, making assumptions about what something (or someone) *is* or is likely to do, based on a factor it (or he or she) has in common with a previously encountered example of a similar thing (or person) (Although, let's be fair, most bigotry towards PEOPLE is just pure fantasy and has nothing to do with examples encountered personally or otherwise).
STUUUUUUUUUUPIIIIID.
Stupid even when you're dealing with ordinary, uncomplicated things like car parks or ceiling fans or toasters or frogs or bacteria.
REEEEEALLY, REEAALLY fucked up when you're dealing with people, for the following reasons. People are WAY more complicated than almost anything else and it's silly and illogical to make assumptions about them, period. People are conscious and are able to anticipate and react to being judged, often in surprising and unfriendly ways, particularly if they feel your judgement of them is innaccurate.
It is a common practice of some of those practitioners of the monotheistic religions from the Middle East to make monolithic judgements of large groups of people, in the same way as it was common practice of the citizens of Nazi Germany to make monolithic judgements of Jews. This makes them bigots. The word "bigot", when applied to such people, isn't a random "ad hominem attack", it is the English word for what they are doing.
Typically they support their position with the word "morality", this is bullshit. Morality is about people, not cruddy mental images, deciding whole groups of people can just be thrown out of certain aspects of the human experience in legally binding ways is treating them as if they are faulty toys from China, not people, and is in itself immoral. If the "morally upstanding" supporters of bigotted ideology are happy with simply ignoring counterexamples to their theory (the kindest understanding of their position), if they are happy with pretending that millions of people can be judged by them to be "faulty" without having MET any of them (the rather more depressing and more likely condition), or, (which is much more common and MUCH more likely) if they are happy with finding these "moral" faults with groups of people even in the ABSENCE of examples which adequately CORROBORATE their theories, then they have no actual understanding of what morality is at all. They aren't talking about people, they're talking about something on the inside of their head. It is not morality which interests them, but something else. Usually self interest or self-image.
And it has nothing whatever to do with ME. This I know.
(I am gay.)
I will now explain why taking issue with people who express bigotted views is not, in itself, bigotted.
One does not really require to demonstrate that there is a causative connection between some aspect of a person expressing bigotted views and the appallingly wasteful and useless consequences of bigotry (unless, I suppose, one is a Holocaust denier). There are essentially no examples of bigotry that can be held up to show bigotry as a useful strategy for dealing with other people.
When I accuse someone who has said "I think all faggots are X" of being a bigot, I am telling them what they are, not confusing them for some other bad, imaginary thing. In short, I am *not* excluding from "niceness" certain bigots who might secretly (unbeknownst to me) be very nice people by calling all bigots out on their bigotry, thereby.... accidentally.... tarring all bigots with the same brush.... (it's bizarre, I know, but some of them genuinely think that sort of thing), but merely pointing out that their position AS THEY HAVE STATED IT is foolish and illogical and falls over flat on its face when you subject it to any criticism at all from a reasonably human perspective.
I'm not PREJUDGING them.
I'm JUDGING THEM.
I'm not making assumptions about them. I don't have to, they have revealed their foolishness by saying bigotted things.
And now, some clearing up....
There will be right-wingers, who, in response to the above, will make a similar point regarding homosexuality, that they think it is inherently immoral in the same way as I have said I think bigotry is inherently immoral. However, they will be ignoring my point, bigotry is immoral, at root, essentially because it treats people as objects and is illogical. Homosexuality, they might argue, is immoral because:
1. "It's just disgusting"
Well, it isn't. I'm gay, and I don't find it disgusting in the least. One cannot claim personal taste to be isomorphic with morality, morality is a collective enterprise and is not based simply on one's personal taste.
2. "It leads to disease"
It doesn't. Unprotected sex leads to disease. Unprotected sex and homosexuality are different things, that is why why have different words in the English language to distinguish between the two. Deciding for the sake of public health that one is functionally identical to the other will lead to confusion and a LESS not MORE effective approach to tackling pubic health issues like sexually transmitted diseases (which conclusion is, of course, mind-blowingly obvious and impossible to avoid if one spends any effort on considering the question seriously at all)
3. "God says it's bad"
Then "God"... my dear homophobic Christians...
...is ...a ...bigot.
Yes, I'm afraid it's true, he's a bigot! Because THAT, you see, is what bigots ARE! Entities that treat people as functionally identical units for the purposes of judgement for no logical reason are BIGOTS whether they are governing bodies, teachers, policemen, car park attendants or Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipotent Creators of Universes, if they treat whole chunks of the human populace as morally equivalent for being (or doing, actually) things that have no discernable detrimental effect on the rest of Creation, they are BIGOTTED. It is the DEFINITION of bigotry to which one must pay close attention, here.
3b. "Maybe there is a logical reason for him hating it and he just hasn't told you"
Well, he's a stupid tit, then. He really had better get of his arse and start doing some pretty serious explaining of his position with useful thinking and sensible logical connections between homosexuality and the BAAAAD thing that homosexuality makes happen, cos I been lookin for it hard, and it ain't there.
A whole bunch of pratty people waving placards saying "WE HATE YOU AND GOD DOES TOO, NER NER NER" doesn't cut it as an explanation, I'm afraid. There has to be a thing I'm doing that affects someone else in a bad way, and there isn't one, basically.
4. "It damages marriage"
I have a suggestion. Why don't you try subjecting that idea to some criticism? Perhaps there's something wrong with it? What SUPPORTS the idea? What might be considered an OBJECTION to that idea? (Go and do some thinking about what marriage is, right wing peeps).
5. "It makes CHILDREN gay!!!! GAYYYYY!!! CHILDREN MIGHT THINK IT'S ALRIGHT, AND TURN GAY THEMSELVES!!!"
If you believe that, you don't know much, and that's a fact.
If you believe that, you probably think homosexuality is some sort of conscious human rebellion against the natural order, a primarily political movement that seeks only to challenge authority, you're wrong, homosexuality is PART of the natural order. Perhaps you will explain to me how I "choose" to make my dick go hard at the thought of men and not women?
The reason you think homosexuality is a choice is because you think it's a "morality" movement. It;s not a morality movement. YOUR RELIGION is a morality movement and seeks to convert and recruit members, the homosexual community does not, it accepts people who are ALREADY HOMOSEXUAL.
It is of vital importance to you to see homosexuality as a choice. This is because you can only view homosexuality as an act OPPOSED to your religion, and so, to give fire to your hate, you project your wilfulness upon us, assuming that we do what we do simply to spite you. Homosexuality is not a religion, it is not a "lifestyle" that puts itself forward on the stage of world morality as an alternative, I do not have the "alternative" of being heterosexual, it is not a choice. One does not choose what arouses the little guy, he chooses. Simple as that.
Homosexuality, dear homophobes, has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. It does not exist to make you feel uncomfortable. It does not exist as a sort of political argument against *your* "lifestyle". I don't CARE about your lifestyle.
Homosexuality simply EXISTS.
And some clearing up...
Most of the right wingers reading this and making any sort of critique of it will ignore its central point completely, they don't care to challenge it, because bigotry and conflation are essentially the CENTRAL PILLARS of right wing ideology, almost everything else in the Right Wing Canon can be explained as a logical result of harbouring bigotted ideology. Subconsciously, they will shy away from facing this.
Treating people as faulty because of an aspect of their behaviour or personality that has no demonstrable detriment to the rest of society is not only immoral (treating people as objects) it is thoroughly illogical (treating the "people objects" stupidly). Having said that, most die-hard right wing phobes will cling like grim death to the irrationality.
Sometimes I think its the irrationality ITSELF that attracts them to the idea. It replaces something in them that they feel is missing. They cling to it as if it were a storm-tossed buoy in the middle of the Atlantic. How can I show them, I wonder to myself sometimes, that, in fact it is the storm?
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