I watched the new PhilosophyTube video (available now in Nebula, free on YT on Friday) and there’s a part where she’s discussing how conservative philosophers see the gendered division of labor and the family unit. And the main guy she discussions says that the country and the family are more or less the same social bond at a different scale. The family or country is to be an unquestioned stable thing that people see themselves and others as permanently in relation to and because of this shared relationship it allows or at least encourages them to be more civil when there are conflicts disagreements or tensions.
Like okay now now I know we disagree but we’re all family here so let’s put the knives away and discuss this as a family nobody here is the enemy. And the nation is just the larger social unit that all the families get contained within. The national identity as British or American stabilizes internal conflicts because “now now we’re all British here no need to act like barbarians let’s discuss this as civil countrymen who all just want what’s best for this country” (this is a conservative philosopher remember).
And Abigail Thorne mentions how queer people (especially but among others) often exist outside of the family unit or without a family unit and how this renders us precarious. Conservatives see everyone as inherently bound to and organized by their family as the sub-unit of the nation and all control, aid, resource management, etc is to go through the family. Conservatives see “getting bailed out by mom and dad” as being basically what youre supposed to get instead of welfare from the government.
And something clicked for me that I’ve been thinking about which is how when you are outside of the family unit, when you’re no long a part of a supposedly permanent and stable organizing unit everyone is assumed to be irrevocably a part of, you in a sense also become outside of the nation. The nation is constructed as the meta family containing all the other acceptable families, under this conservative philosophy, and so if you are outside of family you are outside society.
And that is in many ways what it does feel like. So much of our society is structured based on the assumption that you are a part of a family unit that is legally recognized by the nation/state. Jess might be my emergency contact in my hospital’s record system and listed as “sister” but there is no legal recognition. They discharged me to her on Saturday but if I had died they would not have released my body to her they would only release it to my biological relatives who they do not have on file and have no way to contact. The system doesn’t even have a fail safe built in for how exactly one is supposed to handle this. Gay marriage was such a big fight because it allowed gay people to have legally recognized families by the state and to therefore join the national structure.
Around the holiday season this comes up a lot culturally. “Everyone” according to your job, advertising, media, etc. is having the “same” experience of spending time with “their family” as this permanent social unit and there’s even memes about how much people hate this because they “have no choice” but to sit through time with relatives because according to this conservative philosophy Abigail Thorne discusses, the fact that nobody questions the stability of the family relationship is crucial to its value. The moment you allow yourself to consider it a choice if you have your parents, siblings, etc. in your life the conservative “family value” dissolves because now every conflict doesn’t force you to consider that you’re going to be around these people for the rest of your life. You can just walk away. If you can just walk away, you don’t have to put up with their bullshit.
The legal codification of the family and dismantling of welfare thus prevents you from walking away. The less social resources, the more dependent on your family. The more they’re embedded into how systems regard you, the harder it is to detach from them. I can’t remove my parents from my birth certificate. I had asked a lawyer a while ago and legally I cannot even refer to chosen family as such in a will and cannot designate a living person as responding for my body once dead who is not legally “family” unless I made them properly responsible for me even alive in all sorts of ways I was uncomfortable with. The best the lawyers would allow is “Who I think of as being like a sibling” a phrase which inherently delegitimizes my own self definition of what relationships are important to me. My biological brother legally is always “my brother” but my brother by choice will always be “something almost as important as a brother” despite being far more important to me and who simply knows me far better and is in my life more.
The reason someone who is estranged always feels alienated every day in society even once surrounded by amazing chosen family and loved ones is because the entire country is still structured to exclude your own self definitions of who you consider your important social units. You cannot self organize outside of a monogamous marriage.
I’m someone who very much wants to get married someday but to be honest a lot of that is just wanting legal recognition of a family member who I chose. So I’d never have to worry about biological family being given control over something in my life or death.
And if the family as defined by the state is the sub structure of the state as a social unit defining a nation, when you cannot self organize outside of the family assigned to you, you cannot self organize outside of the larger structure assigned to you which is to say the country.
If the value in the family is that its stability is unquestioned then it also means you cannot question the state, nation, country as eternal and unchanging. You cannot look at the nation and say “I’m not putting up with your bullshit anymore I’m walking out.” Not unless you get claimed by another Nation, in a sense marrying that country.
People can’t imagine the United States ever changing from the shape and structure it is now. They also can’t imagine ever walking out on their biological relatives who are always racist at thanksgiving. It receives power by being unquestionable.
Which, as Abigail Thorne says, is why conservatives hate any time left wing people ask questions. Any time we analyze how things work. Any time we point out that things are social constructs. If you’re never allowed to question it or it loses power, then any amount of questioning becomes scary, no matter what. Inquiry is dangerous. This is just the way things are and you must never wonder why or how else it could be.
As the holidays come up again, it’s time for another round of being asked by people constantly questions assuming I’m inside the nation and I have to answer that I’m actually precariously living outside of the structure everyone harmoniously lives in. It makes people inherently uncomfortable. Every time I say it even if I don’t explain why they always get uncomfortable and wish I had lied and pretended I was flying to Boston to spend time with parents who I haven’t seen in nearly a decade. They don’t want to think about why I’m not in a family unit like that, how I could be happy without it. It’s a question. If I walked out on biological relatives… could they? How many things do they put up with that they don’t need to. Can they walk away?
Anyway just a stream of consciousness ramble inspired by a video that only some people can even watch right now tysm tootles
