Symbols That Kill
Will civilization suffer death by symbolic gesture?
The world we inhabit is too big and complicated for any three pound human brain to understand it all. Symbols are powerful tools for navigating some of that complexity, distilling abstract ideas into easily managed shorthand that helps us feel we’ve got a good handle on them. But the map is not the territory and the menu is not the meal. When we become too focussed on our symbols, we often lose touch with the more nuanced reality they’re supposed to represent.
We know that hate symbols are a problem, because more hate speech always means more hate crimes. What I want to focus on today is how even positive symbols often get in our way.
It can be distressingly easy to pretend that symbolic victories are real ones, and can effectively stand in for doing the hard work necessary to address fundamental issues.
Performative feminism is a perfect example.
We’ve all seen misogynists who froth at the mouth at any mention of the word feminism, but at least in principle the majority of us seem to agree with the idea that women are human beings every bit as much as men are, and should be fairly entitled to the same human rights, dignity, and opportunity. Even politicians whose policies disproportionately hurt women will still tweet a few platitudes for international women’s day to court female voters.
US Democrats and Canadian Liberals get to score easy points here because they only have to look better than the GOP/Conservatives, and that bar is crazy low. If all you have to do to look feminist is to not try to obliterate legal rights women fought hard for and won fifty years ago, there’s very little real pressure to actually make things better in meaningful ways. Comparing yourself to the worst possible example is a great way to justify lacklustre performance.
So as Ontario Canada heads into a provincial election, the Liberal party made a big effort to ensure that fully half of its candidates are women, even declaring that certain ridings would only consider woman candidates to make it happen. More opportunities for women’s voices to be heard in governance is undoubtedly a good thing.
