| Man: | "I think South Africa is the worst place, though." |
| Woman: | "A lot of violence there." |
| Man: | "Yeah. Did you know that white South Africans, they get car-jacked a lot? I mean, a lot." |
| Woman: | "Yeah, but they're..." |
| Man: | "...oppressors." |
| Woman: | "Yeah, so they deserve it." |
Isn't it comforting to fit people into little boxes and categories, so that you can stop caring about what happens to them? I'm as guilty as anyone: I do it with feminists and sometimes with women. Isn't it comforting to read about some white guy who was murdered for his car in South Africa and think, "Oh, yeah, but some other white guys are real assholes and treat black people badly, so that makes it OK that that particular white guy died"? It makes it OK that he died. Even though perhaps he treated black people with respect, or maybe didn't have much to do with them. Even though perhaps he worked hard to make things better for black people... there are some white people doing that, even in South Africa. No, he was white. That's enough. It's OK that he died because, hey, he was part of the "oppressor class" and so we can lump him in with the fascists, the killers, and the bigots, no matter what he was like as an individual. In fact, it really doesn't matter what he was like as an individual. He was white and he lived in South Africa; that was crime enough.
As I said, isn't it comforting?
As well, they're not blood-and-guts, hawkish warmongering right-wingers who believe this. They're vegan, hemp-wearing, revolutionary, left-wing intellectuals. They're not bigots. They just hate oppressors. Who are oppressors? Well, they're certain groups of people, like white people in South Africa, and, well, anyone who looks like them and lives in the same place.
I'm not saying that conservative people, or religious people, or Catholics somehow have a leg up on this woman. I'm not saying that I'm purer and more high-minded than she is. Definitely not. What I am putting down here is a reply to all those people who want to know why I'm no longer a feminist, socialist, left-winger. Why I'm now an anti-feminist conservative. Why I went over to the "dark side." The conversation transcribed above is part of my answer. My answer is that there is no "dark side," or the "dark side" is everywhere, in all movements. It isn't what one point of view or another is about. Instead, it's just background noise. Conservatives aren't heartless. Liberals and socialists aren't high-minded. Love, nurturing, compassion, mercy, kindness, disaffection, anger, bigotry, hatred, selfishness, fear, prejudice... they're all pretty-much evenly spread around. Catholics hate abortionists. Feminists hate men. Leftists hate white South Africans, white Americans, and sometimes themselves for what happened to the Indians. Marxists hate the upper class. Capitalists hate the lower class.
There's no shortage of little boxes to put people in, either. Marxists think there are financial classes. Feminists think there are sexual classes. Blacks think there are racial classes. I think there are classes of sexual politics.
It's the human way of dealing with millions of people, with meeting hundreds of people every day. You can't get to know every one individually. Well, Jesus did, but life was slower back then. Now we just toss them in boxes. This one's a feminist. That one's a leftist. That one's a conservative. That one's a skinhead. This one's a single mother. That one's a divorced father. And for every box we have a list of ready-made qualities we ascribe to it. Self-absorbed. Angry. Annoying. Petty. Self-righteous. Dogmatic. Immature. Cold. Heartless. Vicious. Greedy. Victim. Oppressor. Throughout all of this we forget the one great truth: that there are no boxes. That all there really is are individuals.
But, as I said, and as the conversation illustrates, nobody is immune from bigotry and prejudice, not even those, like the left-wing revolutionaries at the next table, who claim to hate bigotry and prejudice.
So, when I became a conservative, I never did switch to the "dark side." I just changed my point of view.
