Well, I guess I see it as that psychological mechanism is itself what feminists call "sexism" and what anti-racists might call "racism"
Surely they're only examples of it at work? Like your example of the moss growing on the side of a tree as opposed to the genre of a book, it's only because we see gender as an important category that we perceive oppression-based-on-gender to be so important that it deserves its own name.
this is why the impulse to think that the form of systemic injustice one is studying is primordial. If the psychological mechanism is still in place, I don't think it's possible to say that sexism or racism has ended, because it's still possible to analyze the injustice left in the world as a sublimated form of racism or sexism, respectively.
This would be an example of the "if all you have is a hammer..." phenomenon, yes? If you're passionately committed to fighting sexism, then it's natural to assume that other forms of prejudice are redirected sexism, or sublimated sexism, or whatever.
I suspect that the need to distinguish between me, you and them is inherent in humanity... not even a product of linguistic thought, but essential to self-awareness at all. What we can do is broaden the "we/you" category at the expense of the "them" one.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 04:34 pm (UTC)Surely they're only examples of it at work? Like your example of the moss growing on the side of a tree as opposed to the genre of a book, it's only because we see gender as an important category that we perceive oppression-based-on-gender to be so important that it deserves its own name.
this is why the impulse to think that the form of systemic injustice one is studying is primordial. If the psychological mechanism is still in place, I don't think it's possible to say that sexism or racism has ended, because it's still possible to analyze the injustice left in the world as a sublimated form of racism or sexism, respectively.
This would be an example of the "if all you have is a hammer..." phenomenon, yes? If you're passionately committed to fighting sexism, then it's natural to assume that other forms of prejudice are redirected sexism, or sublimated sexism, or whatever.
I suspect that the need to distinguish between me, you and them is inherent in humanity... not even a product of linguistic thought, but essential to self-awareness at all. What we can do is broaden the "we/you" category at the expense of the "them" one.