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Nothing in your comment indicates that people actually genuinely believe the argument you're making, over the ones I pointed out. I don't doubt that somewhere, someone likely had a genuine reaction of "he's married to [x], therefore the likelihood that he has hatred for [x] is lower," if only for Bayesian reasons. But, I'll reiterate, I've never actually observed this happening anywhere. By my observation, people consider it exactly as discredited as the "My best friend is black/gay/trans/etc." explanation for why someone isn't racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc. in basically exactly the same ways (note that some people will say that this is discredited because it's a lie - this person's best friend actually isn't black/gay/trans/etc. - this is one form of discrediting it, but the more common one is that presuming that that statement were true, it still says nothing about whether or not that person has hatred for [x]). Because "hatred" is such a loose term that can encompass a near limitless range of behaviors and attitudes.
You are observing it right now, in this very conversation. And in fact you have observed it many times; the entire reason that progressives had to invent this galaxy-brain contrarian psychobabble you’re regurgitating is because so many normal people intuitively recognized that someone who hates X is actually pretty unlikely to form a long-term intimate relationship with an X. This view has not been “discredited”. It remains true, and you have let Social Science™️ enjoyers gaslight you into believing that “Oh, everyone knows that’s been discredited.” It has not! The contrarian critical theory take is actually just wrong!
Alright, fair enough. If you're saying you genuinely buy this argument and genuinely don't consider it discredited, then I have no grounds with which to claim that you are wrong. But, honestly, none of this is galaxy-brain contrarian psychobabble. The ability of humans to compartmentalize apparently-contradictory views is something that has been observed long before anyone ever came up with modern critical theory.
More to the point, the word "hatred" when used to describe someone like Harris "hating white men" is clearly meant to invoke the same kind of meaning as when someone claims that someone like Trump "hates women" or someone like Charlie Kirk "hated gay people." It's perfectly reasonable to complain that this re-definition of "hatred" in order to keep the negative affect and connotations while expanding its scope to include entirely loving and empathetic behaviors towards someone is dishonest. I consider that as a non-discredited way of arguing against accusations of hatred: my behavior only counts as hatred under your deranged, stupid re-definition of hatred, and I don't respect your deranged, stupid re-definition. But I do consider the argument that "this other behavior I engage is inconsistent with someone who hates [x]" as fully discredited, because it's neither engaging with the actual accusation nor engaging with the reality of cognitive dissonance.
Which “actual accusation” are you referring to? I obviously agree that the expansion of “hatred” to mean “supports policy positions which are less-than-maximally-optimal for some specific group” is a transparently bogus rhetorical trick.
Therefore, I am simply refusing to engage with it at all, and instead sticking to an intuitive definition of “hatred”: i.e. sustained negative emotions toward a particular individual or group, desire to see that individual or group come to harm, an aversion to interpersonal interactions with that individual or group, a belief that the individual or group is bad/harmful/obnoxious, etc. Under this understanding of hatred, it would take a pretty mighty and resolute level of cognitive dissonance to intentionally form a long-term intimate relationship with a member of the hated group. Yes, people are capable of cognitive dissonance, but for most people cognitive dissonance is resolved over time.
In the case of a [person who hates white men, married to a white man], that dissonance could be resolved in one of two directions: either the positive qualities of the white spouse, and the continued exposure to positive interactions with the spouse’s white family members and social circles would erode the degree of “hatred” felt by the anti-white spouse over time; or the relationship would break down over time as the white spouse emergent displays the qualities which the anti-white spouse suspected whites of possessing in the first place, or the friction involved with sustained aversive reactions with the white spouse’s white family and friends would cause the anti-white spouse to develop aversive emotions toward the white spouse, even if none were present at the start of the relationship.
Since Kamala has been married to Doug Emhoff for 11 years, presumably even if she hated white men when they got married, she doesn’t anymore. If she still did, I find it highly unlikely that the “compartmentalization” or “cognitive dissonance” which you propose exists would long ago have broken down and some inciting incident or slow buildup of aversive incidents would have caused the breakdown of the relationship.
The "actual accusation" would be that Harris "genuinely hates white men.". Which would be roughly equivalent to, "Kamala Harris feels similar antipathy for white men as is claimed about Trump feeling antipathy for women when his haters accuse him of 'hating women.'" Once we get to the colloquial definition of "hatred," we're not dealing with the accusation, but something stronger.
We have very different intuitions around the power of compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance, it seems. It's hard to get rigorous empirical evidence around this in general, but my experience is that there is no such thing as overestimating its ability to allow people to hold self-contradictory beliefs. Even presuming the colloquial definition of "hatred," I've seen it happen too many times that someone absolutely hates someone that they also love, and other times someone that they convincingly act as if they love, and I've seen it happen for decades at a time. But for the deranged meaning of "hatred" being invoked in this topic, I'm absolutely certain that the stress of this level of cognitive dissonance would just be noise relative to the general stresses and suffering of everyday life.
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Literally the only place I don't see it happening is in progressive strongholds like Reddit and so on. Most people, in my experience, assume that you don't hate (insert group here) if you freely choose to hang out all the time with a member of that group. Which is eminently sensible. The progressive argument for how someone can hate black people while being married to a black person is a terrible argument that doesn't align at all with how people actually behave.
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