Fugitivus Discussion Forum

I know virulent misandrism is not welcome here, but I wanted to see what people thought about oppressed classes hating their oppressors. My white, straight, cis, male friend thinks that hate is bad no matter what and 'two wrongs don't make a right'.

My stance is that hatred, for the right reason, expressed in non-destructive ways, is cathartic and life-affirming, and mostly harmless in the context of the oppressed hating the class that is most known to oppress them, since there is not much they can do against anyone of that class without facing serious consequences. I also feel that white, straight, cis men need to get over their knee-jerk reactions to the "unfairness" of being hated by non-white, non-straight, non-cis non-men and prove themselves as allies.

What do you think? Don't we all need to go through our hatred stage sometimes?

As someone who is likely on a few levels to be the object of this putative hatred, I have to say that the idea of it makes me really uncomfortable—not because I don't think I deserve it, but precisely because I do. On the other hand, I suspect the reason I fall so easily into that state of mind has more to do with my depression than any advanced sense of fairness.

I don't think any of this is an overwhelming reason not to hate, but I think it is something to be considered: hatred can cause pain, and not always to people who are above you on every axis of oppression. It is also more likely to hurt people who are more sympathetic to you, because they can more clearly see and understand why you are hating them. That strikes me as really kind of sad.

In the end, I support this kind of hatred even though I don't approve of it. I wish it were possible to find a better way (a way that didn't hurt me as much), but I recognize that my hurt is not the point here, and that I cannot and should not tell anyone what to do with their emotions.

I think anger at people who are deliberately oppressive, and an oppressive system, is justified and can be healthy, both as an agent of change and a step toward accepting the things beyond your immediate ability to change (you know, steps of grieving and all that - it's one of the steps to acceptance). I think frustration at people who are unwittingly perpetuating oppression is equally understandable, though it can be helpful to remember that often people don't know any better, and if they did they might well change.

But I think hatred is not necessarily a productive thing or a healthy thing, especially when directed at the accidental oppressor, or even entirely innocent member of an advantaged class, rather than the deliberate oppressor.
From the perspective of caring for yourself and your own emotional state, I've found hate to be a draining feeling, something that makes you feel worse over time as it mounts and perpetuates itself.
From the perspective of engendering change, it can be unproductive because it can lead you not to want a dialogue, to ultimately crave separatism, where the oppressed class can just live entirely away from the oppressive culture but also all the people who were advantaged by the oppressive culture. As a person who would prefer to dismantle oppressive systems and mindsets, hating all people advantaged by those systems and mindsets doesn't bring me any closer to that goal. It probably would make it harder to work with allies from advantaged classes and forge friendships with them. It would also make it harder to see members of the advantaged classes as potential allies or even potentially good people, which is defeatist in that it leads to an attitude of, "Why try, they're all awful anyway", and also problematic in that it's a form of unfair stereotyping, classifying advantaged people as inherently more bad or more worthy of hatred than disadvantaged people.

I'm hardly saintly enough to advocate loving a deliberate oppressor, and am pretty ok with hating someone who deliberately harms others, but it doesn't seem fair to hate anyone who hasn't earned that hatred by their own actions.

Hatred is a sufficiently intense emotion for me that it pretty much has to be personal, rather than demographic. I'm speaking from a position of a lot of relative privilege though (white, cis, middle-class), and comparatively little direct (vs background/societal) examples of oppression. I can absolutely see distrust, dislike, contempt (for their cluelessness re: privilege), and the like being the default setting for viewing anyone in the demographic of one's oppressors, and treating individuals from that demographic as if they are bad/dangerous/best avoided until that individual proves otherwise. That seems like a valid survival mechanism, really (I may be biased, because this is how I do things). I think that's distinct from hatred though. Even anger at the oppressors as a class seems to be really different than hatred, at least as I experience it.

I'm less worried about "fairness" if someone does actively hate their oppressors as a class, or even if they feel anger and distrust - though it may, as Graphite points out, hinder communication and lead to a desire for separatism. I think that can still be used productively though until the point where the system is actually dismantled - there's a lot of value to be found in creating oppression-free small communities, as a space where people who are still working for dialog can go and recuperate (for example, women-only collective residences or clubs).

I've never experienced sustained hatred (flashes of hatred are a little different) as a positive or cathartic emotion at all. I guess for some people it might be, but among my friends I also don't know any examples of sustained hatred as something positive. Personally I would be reluctant to assist someone in normalizing their feelings of sustained hatred, no matter how much the target sucks. In fact, I read "non-destructive hatred" as an oxymoron/impossibility.

However, I don't view sustained hatred as a sin or a crime.* Instead I would see it as something that is probably harmful and just kind of hope they eventually get to a point where they move on to something else. Kind of like...I dunno...dieting. Because I cannot be sure that it's bad for them, and it's not really my business, I probably would not say anything to them unless they ask me to validate their hatred. (That's making it my business.) Then, as I said, I would likely refuse. Uh, like I'm doing in this thread, I guess.

I also noticed an error of reasoning in your original post, where you said that any action resulting from hatred against one's oppressor is "mostly harmless" since there would be "serious consequences" for it. I think I am reading you correctly. In fact, it is possible to act harmfully and then face serious consequences that do not cancel out the harm.

*ETA: Oh, your friend's words bother me for this reason. He said "Two wrongs don't make a right." That saying is usually used to talk about people who have wronged each other. I do not believe it is right to say that hatred is a wrong against someone else. Feelings are not violence.

Oh, Quixotess, you're right. Harm can be done anyway regardless of consequences- I was simply thinking most people wouldn't RISK those consequences.

He seemed to think someone hating an oppressed group was the exact same thing as an oppressed person hating a privileged group. It's not. One is backed by institutionalized power, the other isn't. One is a personal hatred, the other is a cultural one.

I've thought about it some more, and now I don't really understand why I felt that hatred of people as a group would be all right. There is something to say for being wary of that group, if experience has shown you time and time again that people of that group are going to hurt you or behave oppressively toward you- or even just the threat of the fact that they CAN do it and that it's acceptable and supported by the society you live in, would be cause enough to be distrustful.

I suppose my feelings about the matter come from the idea that no matter how progressive or nice someone from an oppressive class is, there's still going to be a hint of an -ism in their minds, in how they behave toward you. I haven't really met enough people who are exceptions to the rule to be able to seriously consider the harm that might be done to allies.

As for hatred as healthy, I suppose I was confused, because acknowledging your hatred toward somebody who has abused you IS healthy, but that's in the context of recovering repressed emotions. I don't think sustained hatred would be the goal, because I know from experience how that can eat away at you and drain you. I think acknowledging that hatred, if it's there, to begin with, is the healthy part. And at any rate, there's a difference between hating your abuser and confusing everyone who shares something in common with that abuser with your abuser.

Thank you for replying, everyone, and sorry I'm so muddle-headed. I would sincerely like to hold dialogue about things, but my thinking is confused at times.

I don't even think people who ARE a member of an oppressed class ever entirely eliminate their internalized -ism.