Nihilation

 It's always struck me that there is an odd logical inconsistency in the right-wing position on most culture war issues. After all, the current conservative talking point about Trans identity is that it is somehow "impossible." Someone assigned the male sex at birth simply cannot become a woman—according to conservatives—by some sort of fixed natural law. But, if this is so—if the thing they fear cannot actually happen anyways—then why are they so up in arms about it? 

One heard a version of the same thing a decade ago or so, when mainstream conservatives were still fighting the same-sex marriage battle. Right-wingers would say things like "marriage is between a man and a woman." And often, if pressed on this, they would explain that they meant this as a descriptive as much as a normative statement. Marriage between two women, or between two men, they claimed, simply could not happen. It was a contradiction in terms. It was a kind of ontological impossibility. 

Of course, this is just a permutation of the "futility" trope, which—as Albert O. Hirschman explained long ago—is one of the Big Three arguments that show up in every kind of reactionary rhetoric. The argument always goes like this: "proposed social or cultural reform X [let us say, allowing people to change their gender identity and to use whatever gender pronouns they see fit] is doomed to fail; it goes against natural law and the force of destiny." 

But every variety of the futility argument falls victim to the same logical problem discussed above. If the social or cultural reform in question cannot succeed anyway—and humanity is doomed to fall back into its previous patterns—then why do conservatives expend so much energy resisting these reforms? If they will just end up recapitulating society as we already find it, then why should conservatives (who want to preserve the status quo) oppose them? To return to our specific example, if "men" truly can't become women, or vice versa—why should conservatives care if they try to identify that way? 

I don't think there's a way for them to get out of this logical hole—but reading Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's sociological classic this week—The Social Construction of Reality—one does at least gain psychological insight into what is at stake for conservatives in this debate. The authors argue that human societies are in empirical fact almost infinitely diverse. Yet, each society must choose a particular mould in which to fit its members, among the infinite options. In this choice lies the risk of "reifying" into fixed laws of nature what are actually human-produced, culturally-variable social institutions.

A person born into a particular society, after all, will often receive that society's definitions of identity as if they were fixed and immutable. Because they are explained to them, during their socialization process as children, in the same way that laws of the physical world are explained (as in, "This is the way things are"), then these social rules confront the individual with the same force of necessity as natural laws. Even though the rules of human society are socially-produced, therefore—they feel inevitable. 

This sense of inevitability—we might even say, to borrow Hirschman's term, "futility"—is a key feature of how the authors define "reality" in general. Reality, they say, is that which we cannot alter by our thoughts or will alone (or at least, that which we believe we cannot alter by these means). It is that which we "cannot wish away." It is this impression of immovability and unresponsiveness to our individual efforts that gives us the sense that reality is "external" to us (even as some metaphysical theories posit that it might not actually be external to consciousness at all). 

Every social order will therefore present itself to the people who grow up in its midst as if it were reality tout court. Yet, as a person ages—especially while living in a pluralistic global society in which we cannot escape at least some knowledge of human cultural and sociological diversity—they eventually discover that people exist who do not share their sense of reality about these institutions. This, in the authors' terms, creates a "problem." How can the reality truly be inevitable and immoveable if there are people who in fact live without it? 

The visible evidence of people living outside of one's own social institutions and identity roles, therefore, creates—as it were—a kind of tear in the fabric of reality itself. Because the individual's knowledge of identity and institutions "is socially objectivated as knowledge," the authors write, "that is, as a body of generally valid truths about reality, any radical deviance from the institutional order appears as a departure from reality." 

How, in other words, can something be "reality" if other people don't recognize it? The essence of reality, in the authors' formulation, is that it is "coercive." One must submit to it, regardless of one's will. And here—in the presence of people who have defined their identities and shaped their institutions without regard to these same categories—there is proof that some have not submitted. If there are "men" living as women, or vice versa, for instance, it calls the whole scheme of reality into question (at least for societies that have reified the institution of the gender binary). 

This prompts a crisis for the social order. In order to retain its sense of reality, it must resort to certain concrete strategies to negate or contain the alternative reality that threatens it. Berger and Luckmann dub two of these strategies "therapy" and "nihilation." In other words, the dominant social reality can either indoctrinate the recalcitrant nonconformists into recognizing that their deviant identity was merely a product of a reality-denying delusion all along (think "conversion therapy"); or they can deny the deviant's existence. 

Berger and Luckmann specifically had sexual and gender identity in mind when they wrote these passages, by the way. Despite being a recognized sociological classic, beloved by the academy, the Social Construction of Reality is far from a stodgy book. The authors frequently illustrate their points with sexual metaphors. Whether this is simply a (quite effective) device to get the reader's attention and implant the authors' conception in the hippocampus, or something more, it shows a startling awareness of how their ideas could go on to influence gender theory. For a book published by two heterosexual married men in 1966, this seems rather prescient and forward-thinking. 

One of the authors' racy examples along these lines involves a hypothetical society (reminiscent of ancient Sparta) that exclusively promotes homosexuality in the military in order to improve unit cohesion. In such a society, the authors posit—in a piquant reversal of roles—the leadership would have to develop an ideology both to legitimize universal homosexuality (e.g., they would argue it is the "law of nature"); and to explain away people who strangely refuse to conform to this rule. 

The authors note that the dominant hierarchy in such a society would have to formulate ready-made answers to the soldiers who told them, "but I don't experience same-sex attraction." The leaders of the military would construct a theory of psychological "resistance" to explain how someone might say this was the case—yet, deep down, and if only subconsciously, they would know that it is not actually true. They will therefore apply "therapy" in order to help the person "overcome" this resistance and reestablish their "normalcy," conforming once again to the dominant social type. 

Without harping too long on what should already be an obvious point, this is clearly what conservatives are doing when they run up against the fact of Trans identity. It causes a crisis in their sense of reality. So they respond by a combination of both "therapy" and "nihilation." They try to persuade the Trans woman that she is "actually" a man. When she replies, "No I'm not; I experience myself as a woman," they reply: "You must be confused. You are speaking from ignorance." 

It is "therapy" to the extent that conservatives focus on bringing a person back to their sense of reality. Oftentimes, this will take the form of conversion narratives. This is why conservatives will often host "ex-Trans" speakers at their events—people who once lost touch with the dominant reality, but have since "seen the light" and returned to the "true" understanding of the world and its gender roles. But, if conservatives despair of changing the attitude of a given individual or of bringing them back to the fold, then they will practice "nihilation"; they say, "that doesn't exist; that's not a real thing."

In contemporary leftist discourse, the authors' concept of "nihilation" might be translated as "erasure." And it should be clear already that conservatives practice "nihilation" about a wide range of sexual, gender-based, and personal identities—far beyond Trans, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming identities. They say: "Asexuality? That's not real. People who say they are that are kidding themselves." "XYZ learning disability? That's a fabrication. People are just being lazy." And so on. 

As the authors describe this process of nihilation: "The threat to the social definitions of reality is neutralized by assigning an inferior ontological status, and thereby a not-to-be-taken-seriously cognitive status, to all definitions existing outside the symbolic universe. [....] The presupposition is always that the negator does not really know what he is saying." As we see in the stock conservative argument: "Trans women are just confused about their terms."

This is why conservatives have invested so much time and money in promoting an absurd documentary that argues that "liberals can't define the word 'woman,'" and therefore they must be wrong. A moment's thought would make clear that this argument proves nothing at all—but it makes sense when it is understood in the context of Berger and Luckmann's analysis of the social reality's defense mechanisms. It is simply another tactic of "nihilation." 

Now, this "nihilation" often takes the form of merely denying the ontological status of the alternative reality at the level of opinion. The conservative says: "this so-called 'Trans woman' can continue to exist, but I will know all the time that they are actually a man." 

But, if the continued existence of the person disturbs the conservatives too much, and the person's continued advocacy of their alternative reality, according to which they are a Trans woman, seems like too much of a threat to the conservatives' understanding of their social reality, then they may proceed to the next stage of "nihilation"—which the authors describe as the procedure of "liquidat[ing] physically what one has liquidated conceptually." In other words, extermination. 

As the authors chillingly observe: whether or not the defenders of the received social reality proceed to this second step of physical destruction is often largely "a practical question of policy." In depends on just how endangered they feel their social reality to be, and therefore on what steps they feel are necessary to preserve it.

And so we can see that, when advocates argue that conservatives who deny Trans people's gender identity are only one step away from denying their existence tout court, they are by no means wrong. "Erasing Trans existence" can mean refusing to use someone's gender pronouns—but it can lead by simply one further logical step toward erasing that person's existence in an even more literal way. 

We can see, then, why cultural conservatism has evolved the way it has. 

The conservatives begin by nihilating a new cultural idea that threatens their sense of reality. "Same sex marriage?" they say, "that's not a thing. It isn't real marriage." When same-sex couples then proceed to get married anyways, one could reply to the conservatives (as I suggested at the outset of this post): "Hi conservatives, since you don't recognize this as a real marriage or the same thing as marriage, as you define it, then presumably you won't mind if it happens. Since it has no ontological status anyway, then it can't possibly upset you." 

But, of course, the conservatives are never actually as inwardly certain as they let on that their reality is the true and only reality. The spectacle of someone living in a different reality forces them to question whether their definition of marriage really is the only one available. They start to think their social reality might not actually be the only one conceivable. In order to avoid this dreaded realization, they ratchet up to the next level of nihilation: same-sex marriages must not only be denied conceptually, they must also be suppressed by law. 

This is the psychological and sociological explanation for why—as A.E. Housman wrote in one of my favorite poems—socially normative people cannot simply accept non-conformists. This is the sociological basis for why they simply will not "mind their own affairs," in Housman's words, but rather "must still/Wrest their neighbor to their will." It is because they experience the nonconformist as endangering the continuity of their own reality. 

I remember in the old days of the marriage equality debate, for instance, liberals like me used to argue with conservatives by saying: "why are you so worried about this? It doesn't affect your marriage to have someone else get married in a same-sex ceremony. You can continue to have all the 'traditional marriages' you want. It doesn't impact you." To quote an apt line from Walt Whitman (which Virginia Woolf cites on the subject of gender equality, in her essay Three Guineas): "Of equality—as if it harm'd me—giving others the same rights and chances as myself." 

As fond as I still am of this argument, however—I can see now why it somewhat misses the point. Conservatives think that marriage equality does harm them. They think it does impact their own marriages as well—because they think that someone else defining marriage differently than they do impacts the ontological status of their own marriages. 

Berger and Luckmann specifically cite marriage, by the way, as a quintessential example of a social institution that tends to be "reified" to the point that it is seen as ontologically fixed (meaning that people forget the institution was actually socially-produced and culturally variable). Therefore, someone who defines marriage differently—such as a polygamous union, e.g.—becomes seen as denying the reality of their own marriage. They see it as a threat to their entire sense of social reality. 

It is important to note, however, that the authors do not simply leave us on a note of despair. They do not argue that each society is always doomed to "reify" their own institutions and therefore to brutally punish or negate the existence of outsiders, eccentrics, and non-conformists. The authors do acknowledge that every society tends to "objectivate" its own institutions—as in, it tends to make them seem part of objective reality—which entails, as we have seen, endowing them with a coercive power over the individual. And, as they further note, such "objectivation" must always brush up, at least, against its close-cousin, "reification." 

But, they argue, it is possible to have objectivation without reification. In other words, it is possible for people to both believe in their own institutions and their value while recognizing that they are to some extent culturally relative and subject to change over time. As the authors put it, a person can still "retain[...] awareness that, however objectivated, the social world was made by [human beings]—and, therefore, can be remade by them." 

As the authors acknowledge, after all, most of us in modern life reside in a pluralistic society, in which we are confronted each day with fresh evidence of multiple social "realities." In practice, therefore, people have had to find ways to make their peace with the fact of cultural diversity.

One proposed solution is cultural relativism; but if we completely abandon our own sense of reality, and embrace pure relativity, we would probably go mad—we would live a valueless existence, suspended in absurdity. Most people therefore find that they must defend and promulgate their own reality, amidst this welter of diversity, while recognizing that their reality is not the only possible one—and indeed that it might have deficiencies and blind-spots that are not obvious to us so long as we operate exclusively inside it. 

This kind of value pluralism—which is different from relativism, because we recognize that our own way of life has a distinct value that we want to steward; we simply acknowledge simultaneously that other ways of life realize different values that may be inaccessible to our own—is how we can live a life that finds meaning in our own social "reality," without either succumbing to the "vertigo of relativity" (as the authors call it at one point), or—to the contrary—feeling the need to "nihilate" the social realities of others. 

But to reach this point requires an ability to tolerate psychological tension. It is always easier and more tempting, therefore, to simply backslide into denying alternative realities and value-systems. 

For this reason, the degree of cultural pluralism we know as liberalism will always be a precious, fragile, and endangered thing, in this world. Liberalism requires "sharing existence with the enemy," as Ortega y Gasset once wrote—which is to say, in the terms of the present discussion, it requires sharing existence with multiple social "realities." 

Many people will find they cannot live with this tension. The risk of human slippage back into the attempt to "monopolize" the cultural narrative, and to impose only one set of definitions and roles on others (such as we see in the present conservative moment) will therefore be ever-present.