I recently posted a definition - on my online glossary - of "bigots / bigotry". Normally I would just include the link (https://gnwmythrsglossary.blogspot.com/2021/09/bigots-bigotry.html), but I'm going to copy the definition here and then provide some additional commentary.
Bigots and their bigotries are a subset of conspiracy fantasists/fantasies.
The bigotries that bigots hold to - whatever form it is (sexism / misogyny/misandry, LGBTIQphobia, racism, classism, etc) - is WRONG because it is based on:
(a) wrong perception of reality (e.g., thinking a few people are representative of a class, failure to comprehend the effects of discrimination, etc);
(b) incorrect perception (confirmation bias, F.E.A.R., etc);
(c) suffering from FBU;
(d) taught hate / fear;
(e) personal flaws (e.g., personal insecurity about own sexuality / gender identity);
(f) arbitrary ideas about inclusion / exclusion or access to particular groups (which applies to all forms of sexism, racism, and transphobia - and classism);
(g) etc.
Bigots have the same sort of inability to think that right wing extremists have also been shown to have - the same sort of mental ineptness that conspiracy fantasists have (which is why I now use the term conspiracy fantasy, not conspiracy "theory" - they haven't done enough thinking to justify the word theory).
People in a number of powerful positions / organisations who have ANY form of bigotry are unfit to be in that position - and I am thinking particularly of intelligence services (ASIO was notoriously LGBTIQphobic, but the sort misogyny portrayed in the film "Snowden" shows a person is so flawed in how they perceive reality that I would doubt everything they said).
On the other hand, anyone who (and any organisation that) is genuinely making an attempt to deal with, or at least manage, what is these days termed "unconscious bias", deserves at least the benefit of the doubt.
Other bigots don't, and should be ignored on everything.
My life has been made, too many times and for too long, an abusive horror by bigots - not only the obvious ones (misogynists, etc), but idiots who are prejudging me and getting even with me for abuses they experienced from others - not me, or idiotic assumptions that my life was better than theirs because of irrelevant & inaccurate factor X. Such people tend towards jealous, snarky, sarcastic, or passive-aggressive behaviour.
That sort of behaviour is bigotry just as much as physically bashing people.
Pseudo-intellectual arrogance is another form that has been especially problematic in workplaces. In fact, it is my experience of such behaviour that eventually led me to suspect that bigots are flawed intellectually - they cannot think (I've given some of the recent links on that above, in the transcribed definition), and they do not acknowledge (and possibly aren't even aware of) their emotional baggage, such as blind loyalty to an idea because their parents or some other significant other said it was good when the bigot was young. Because of that blind loyalty to long past, unacknowledged emotional "warm fuzzies", such people are utterly flummoxed by the unfamiliar (FBU).
As an example, I've had such people try to justify their personal preference on how to do things on a computer as being better because "it just is".
Wow. Power of debate, baby - and that was a professional engineer with decades of experience (now long retired, I'm pleased to say [the world and the STEM professions will both be better when certain people of my age bracket and older retire and/or die] ).
Others have made transphobic statements such as "I just naturally assumed that X would be living in a male way" - about a trans WOMAN, but, IPOC, there is nothing "natural", "normal", or even logical about such an absurdist statement, a statement that drips with unconscious bias including misogyny as well as transphobia. Such a statement shows you haven't even thought about the issues involved (I am very glad that particular person has also retired).
The worst example of this problem I've encountered was someone in another company change the recommendations I had written in a report to the opposite of what I had written, and had to advise the company I worked for at the time to consider legal action. Actually, hinting at taking "further action", without being specific at whether it is internal, legal or via the Engineers Australia ethics committee has at least got IPOCs to stop pushing their particular line of stupidity and actually listen to and consider what I was explaining, and, in one instance, led to a company (decades ago now - the company no longer exists) not proceeding with an unethical action.
Similar to that is the arrogance of assuming that other people won't have thought of obvious issues (especially in relation to gender diversity, it seems) because the bigot hasn't pointed the specific matter out personally to the other - which, as well as being staggering personal arrogance, is also an indication of the bigot's stupidity and belittling of other people.
I've written about such workplace problems on my political blog, and the intellectual arrogance and inflexibility has too often manifested as both professional problems and bigotry. At least companies are generally getting much better at managing such risks - QAQC standards (introduced here from the late 1980s) have led to better use of checks and things like project definition, which deals with the problems of mental inflexibility, and the growing interest of companies over the last 15 years or so (here) being inclusive has led to much better prevention and management of many forms of discrimination.
But the trauma caused by decades of bigotry and abuse - both in and out of the workplace - still remains.
Here's a few more examples of bigotry - from outside the workplace - that shows how intellectually inept and inflexible bigots are:
- thinking misgendering is not transphobic (do they think people are discriminatory only when they are physically violent? Do they not know destruction of identity is a crime against humanity under some circumstances?);
- following a misgendering event, a corrected "traffic controller" a mocking bow and a "I meant no offence" in a derisive tone rather than the normal "Sorry, ma'am" (the construction industry is particularly prone to bigotry - I know people who won't walk in public if construction is happening, and the incident just cited is likely to wind up being the subject of legal action or at least complaints);
- thinking forcing lesbians to dance with men while refusing - as a heterosexual (and clearly heteronormative) woman - to danced with women is acceptable (this was someone I knew when I was living on a boat - a period of life which showed just how nasty, spiteful, and small minded some boat people can be);
- an IPOC thinking that, because said IPOC liked their parent, trans people being subjected to misgendering by the parent should be overlooked by the trans person. (On that, I've even had weak minded bigots assume - quite wrongly, if I have to state it - that the reason I advocated for changed ways of doing things was that I hadn't heard the "normal" way of doing things explained in the way their parents had when the bigot was a child [which is so staggeringly lacking in emotional intelligence it should be a crime].)
Some trans people do not help this with things like not admitting how harmful misgendering is, and there are problems within women and minority groups (e.g., some gay men being sexist, some lesbians being transphobic, and almost all others being biphobic), but those issues are minuscule compared to the ENDEMIC bigotry of those in power.
Politics is another area where intellectual ineptness and inflexibility are problems. Some of it manifests as the sort hate shown by some conservatives on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, and socio-economic class (I have to conclude that some such conservative bigots really do want anyone they fear or hate dead);
some shows as the absurd ongoing support for demonstrated idiocy of "trickle down" economics";
ALL of it exacerbates and perpetuates the trauma women and members of minority groups experience.
In other words, ALL of it is evil.
At some stage I'm going to be recommending "The Exorcist's Handbook" (Golem Media, 3rd edition, 2010, ISBN 978-1-937002-43-5, Amazon), by Josephine McCarthy, who is also responsible for this website. That book covers evil in a dispassionate way, and the harm that can be done by possession, psychic attack, etc (especially indirect psychic attack), albeit much of that from a Western Mystery Tradition perspective.
So, in a nutshell, bigots cannot think, and MUST be distrusted on all matters of the mind as well as all matters of the heart. The problem can be addressed, but even better, it can be prevented by making sure we teach children clear thinking and emotional intelligence.
And while that is being done, we need laws to constrain bigots' evil.
