Mulling: Authoritarianism, Gender Essentialism, Bureaucracy

Some linked and pending questions

Photo by Vlada Karpovich on Pexels

Hey there everyone —

I’m in a mulling place, thinking about two questions:

Why is gender essentialism a key component of authoritarianism, rationalizing violence against people deemed biologically different, inferior, or “out of place”?

and

What happens when we are compelled to spend hours of our lives interacting with bureaucratic systems—obtaining and completing legal documents; fulfilling licensure requirements; gaining access to social services and government benefits; coordinating our healthcare benefits—and how does “thinking bureaucratically” shape or frustrate our ability to access creativity and imagination?

Finally — I guess this is a question, too:

Is it in the interest of authoritarian systems to increase our bureaucratic entanglements—a la Kafka—and how does bureaucracy, often characterized as “faceless” and therefore inhuman, contribute to our sense that we are alone, with no one around who can empathize with us, perhaps making us more vulnerable to the authoritarian argument that all we can expect from systems is chaos and contempt, and that we therefore need a strongman to defend us, or lend us his power and disdain for law and rules, to give us an island of emotional respite?

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I’m thinking about these questions personally—no worries, I’m not longing for a strongman in my life—because I’m currently very bureaucratically entangled, and I’m watching what it’s doing to my thinking and my emotions. But I’m also thinking about these questions given the political backdrop of the last week, anticipating what could be on our horizon as citizens. What kinds of arguments will be coming our way about gender essentialism? What bureaucratic processes are we being asked to currently navigate, and how will our stamina change if these systems become increasingly unwieldy and broken? What kind of emotional support can we provide each other if we are feeling frustrated, frozen out, inept, hopeless, or powerless? How does organizing for change become itself another bureaucracy, and how can it stay human and joyful instead?

I’m going to keep thinking about all this, and I hope I’ll have more to say when I’m feeing more clear. For now, I’m trying to just track the questions, and I thought I’d share them with you today, unfinished, because there may be others who are reading this who are asking these same questions, too.

Stay safe out there this week—

xo

Rebecca