Clickbait title: Is rape imaginary?

…“The dissociation of labor and disintegration of society, which liberty and free competition occasion, is especially injurious to the poorer class; for besides the labor necessary to support the family, the poor man is burdened with the care of finding a home, and procuring employment, and attending to all domestic wants and concerns. Slavery relieves our slaves of these cares altogether“… Pg. 27, Sociology For The South Or The Failure of Free Society, George Fitzhugh

 

In the 1850’s, Fitzhugh rambled for over 300 pages, in nearly biblical fashion, defending the theory that slavery was a form of freedom whilst freedom was actually a form of slavery. His title page introduces his first fallacy (from the bible itself), an appeal to tradition. Then he has the nerve to quote Horace with “You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back”.

I chose Fitzhugh as an analogy because he perfectly demonstrates the method used by monotheistic religions to bastardize and destroy the true meanings of words. A process that began two thousands years ago with the bible and that is still abundantly used by Sophisticated Theologians™ today. We often hear this form of deception from defenders of the burqa: A woman who wears a burqa is truly free, unaffected by the gaze of others. A church near where I had tennis lessons as a boy had a monumental sign over its façade which was even more blunt: You can only be free if you repent and accept Jesus is your saviour. We can see variations of these forms of deception and manipulation anywhere where religion is being promoted- but that’s not why I’m bringing it up now. I think it’s important to revisit the topic because there’s a massive resurgence of this variety of idiocy. For years the anti-gay crowd have been telling us homophobia isn’t a “real thing”. In fact, opposing the right of two gay people to be married to each other is not homophobia. Because, of course, telling other free citizens who they can or cannot marry is utterly normal. Passing laws to prohibit such unions is indeed a reflection of individual freedom in democratic societies …?

Obviously not.

And that brings me to my point. Appeals to confusion and attempts to confuse. From Yiannopoulos to the garden variety Trump supporter, we see the same assault on language and reason. Take this hilarious line from the Trumpkin: “In a real democracy, people disagree… and they aren’t necessarily racist or sexist or Homophobic if they do.” – That is no more and no less than an attempt to normalize those three things. In a fair democracy all citizens have the same rights. All citizens are equal. And so yes, saying black people deserve less rights is racist, saying things that demean women is sexist, and interfering with a gay person’s right to lead their own life and choose their own partner is in all likelihood homophobic. Attempting to justify these things isn’t “politically incorrect”, it’s deception. Dishonesty in action.