re wondering just why the far right is so obsessed with...¶

In case you're wondering just why the far right is so obsessed with queer people, it's because of a fascist tendency toward what we call "essentialism." It's a pseudo-mystical belief that objects--and people--have a sort of essence to them, imbuing them with immutable traits. https://t.co/mnic3QRGms This idea has ancient roots. In Western philosophies, Plato and Aristotle posited that not only are there "ideal" forms of objects and people, but the objects themselves are made of a "substance" that make them what they are. You cannot do anything to change the object. It should be pretty obvious that essentialism is a crucial aspect of hierarchical societies. A slave is not just a slave because he had his freedom stolen from him, but because of the essence of slavishness that suffuses his entire being. Therefore, slavery is right and good. A woman's role is to take care of children and maintain the home, not because that's what society demands of her, but because that is literally the definition of "woman." For her to strive for anything else would be to deny her very essence. As so it goes in all aspects of society. The shoemaker is a shoemaker, due to the essence of shoemakerness. A monarch not only deserves to be monarch, but is actually fulfilling an important social and metaphysical purpose by ruling over everyone. How magnanimous! It's obvious why people at the top of the social hierarchy would be fond of this. But even people at the bottom can find comfort in essentialism. Feeling like there's nothing they could have done differently, feeling like their miserable existence is actually cosmically "right." When slaves revolt, when women leave the home, when people are homosexual or trans or nonconforming in any way, they are abandoning their "proper role." That means they're not just making an individual choice: they're disrupting the "natural" order. For those who rule over us, that is a dangerous prospect. If we stop believing in our inherent "manness" and "womanness," what's next? Abandoning our inherent poorness? Will we rise up and unseat these people from their inherently deserved wealth? This trickles down to a subset of the ruled masses, who also demand that essentialist order. Whatever they have, they see as being essential to them. They fear it will be destroyed, just like we destroy the "natural" gender order. If the elite focused entirely on the "rightness" of the economic status quo, they would have far fewer supporters among the working class. So instead they have to focus on the "rightness" of other aspects of society: race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion. So no, it's not just a coincidence that bigotry thrives in a right-wing environment. Essentialism is literally the cornerstone of right-wing thought.