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The politics of disgust unite seemingly-disparate political philosophies and not knowing that is misleading people. Like how some people can't see how SWERFs, TERFs, and fascists are uniting because of their shared politics of disgust.
First off, the politics of disgust is politics based on actual disgust. Nazis are where I learned about it, and they are the classical example. They are very concerned that no one think or do or *be* anything that disgusts them and unite with others with similar disgusts.
The shared disgust against excluded groups defines the in-group that they create to counter and remove the source (ie, people) of their disgust. The in-group is usually an ahistorical use of a group term and a site of important myth-making to their politics (eg, "Aryan" to Nazis)
Given that disgust is a very visceral reaction, it is also not a surprise that those engaging in its politics love pseudoscience, especially racist pseudoscience. Also, the pseudoscience is almost always an observational classification system.
For instance, TERFs claim gender is sex and is observed and is a simple binary with a miniscule few outliers. Nazis and other eugenicists loved their cranial caliper measurements. Actual science is subverted/ignored/perverted to serve this pseudoscience.
(Also, I personally think the preoccupation with "You can always tell by looking!" classifications is because humans are so pattern-seekingly visual, we fool ourselves into thinking our biases are received truths. Also, vision can be visceral.)
Back to the actual disgust, I have noticed those who develop their politics upon disgust tend to have strong imaginings about what the people around them think, look like naked, or do in private and this informs their disgust.
Emphasis on *imaginings*. Because they are disgusted by whomever for their existence to do or be whatever, they avoid such people and thus are resistant to any actual information about them, believing any potentially falsifying information is just propaganda by liars.
This makes it pretty near impossible for most people who aren't so disgusted to talk them out of their politics of disgust with things like facts, arguments, and examples. That's appealing to rationality when disgust is (ultimately) irrational.
As people who aren't on board with at least tolerating their disgust, correctly seeing it as bigoted hatred, fall away, those who are motivated by disgust cling more tightly to theirs and become open to adopting the politics of disgust of others.
Thus, TERFs who are so dedicated to their disgust at trans women they have gone to a Gab instance set up as a TERF honeypot are starting to more frequently express agreement with the fascists who Gab is dominated by (the point of the honeypot).
Historically, you can also see how anti-porn conservatives and anti-porn feminists have cross-pollinated their arguments across what thus seems like no divide between them. Anti-LGBT groups use TERF rhetoric, etc.
Which brings me to my point. Because their politics are ultimately irrational, trying understand them as an intellectual endeavour fails to allow seeing how they link together. It also explains why 'lesbian-supporting' straights are anti-gay.
The consistency is the disgust. For TERFs, they tend to be disgusted by genitals, for SWERFs it's sex (at least sex as bodily work), for anti-porn people it's sex in one or more forms, for fascists it's all that plus racism. They unite in disgust. And can't be argued out.
Thank you for coming to my TwED talk.
Also, I am a poor, disabled trans person. If you found this thread useful and/or informative, please either send me some cash paypal.me/lucypaw or help out anyone asking for help on #TransCrowdFund. Thank you.
