It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been accused of hating anyone or anything, let alone spuriously, and I’m at odds to explain why other than perhaps my ever-shrinking Internet presence of the past 10 years. I’m not a bit enough win, I guess.

Over the period, I’ve had a fair bit of time to reflect on the matter. Particularly on the relatively futility entailed in letting someone else make it all about you, and then proceeding to defend your case.

Whether or not a given individual, in their heart of hearts, actually hates someone is usually pretty nebulous, even if they’re arguing in bad faith. It takes a truly bad actor – say a mugger or the like – to make the matter utterly unambiguous. Similarly, you have to be an unmitigated saint in order to disprove all but the most absurd of accusations, and it’s impractical to expect sainthood of anyone.

It’s largely a distraction. It’s a distraction if you’re unfairly accused. It’s a distraction if you’re fairly accused – the purity of your soul isn’t really salient if there are material consequences to be considered. Unless you’re appointed to some role with a duty of care to the alleged hated, if you’re just some schlub off of social media, or a writer with a small platform, what’ve people got resting on it?

And yet it’s easy to be distracted by it. Maybe you’ll kid yourself that the way past it is to argue through it, only realizing the conversational mobius loop you’ve slipped into after the fact. The return on all that effort is pretty damn nominal.

I’ve been watching people I follow on Twitter being drawn into discussions of “why wouldn’t you fuck people from group X?”, or less colorfully “what is your sexual preference”. We’re talking about sexuality, and the apparent expectation that people make themselves available to certain dating pools.

If I were to participate, I’d probably have to say that I’m Popperian about my sexuality: inductively, I’ve only ever been attracted to natal women, but if I were attracted to anyone outside that group I’d accept it as the proverbial black swan that disproved the hypothesis of my hetero-sexuality. Beyond that, in terms of civics, I’d assert that I’m not under any obligation to date anyone I’m not attracted to, or anyone I am attracted to, and that anyone who thought otherwise was exhibiting the kind of sexual entitlement bias that deserves the attention of a forensic psychiatrist.

Going by the way discussion has gone, this would variously be seen as evidence of a lack of hate, or evidence of hate. For the life of me, I don’t think this does demonstrate hate, but I can see how it’s not compelling as well – it doesn’t disprove hate.

And who’d want to get bogged down in that discussion? And why? And over Twitter?

And of course, while all this has been going on, people haven’t been able to talk about the other matters they’re interested in; mental health, discrimination, confounding variables in social science research, public safety and the common good, medicine, the ontology of protected groups and subsequent proposed demarcations, the trustworthiness of our government, the scope and function of medical organizations, and so on. (Who ever said Twitter was bad for this kind of thing, right?)

Bringing things back…

I have a kind of confidence, and maybe it’s an unearned confidence, and maybe it’s because I’m a white man going through all of this in easy mode, but my suspicion is this: if in future I don’t contest the matter of my own alleged hate, and just ask that we move on to the material stuff – the points of contention – I’m confident that the kinds of people that I want to reach are going to be less inclined to be mistaken about my hate that if I’d dug-in and defended myself.

Sadly, though, I can’t generalize this confidence in the form of advice for others. For one, I’ve seen enough lesbians maligned as malicious in the last three decades to suspect that they can’t expect the same good faith that I can, apparent progress over the years notwithstanding. A good part of Aboriginal activism in Australia has extended good faith towards white Australia in a way that hasn’t been reciprocated.

If popular morning television serves as a barometer, when Aboriginal Australia is accused of hate and white Australia’s vanity is served by this accusation, is it likely that yet more good faith from Aboriginal Australia is going to bring ordinary people around?

All the same, any issue of privilege not withstanding, I think I’m going to go with this confidence in future should I need to. “Okay, so say I’m a hater. What about the important details?”

If I’m a hater, and it matters that much to them, they can always unfollow me and not invite me to their birthday party. Beyond that, I can’t see that it matters terribly much – I don’t wield that much power.

~ Bruce