Since we don't have a 'news that doesn't deserve its own thread' thread (and never will), here's your daily dose of demoralization.

Amherst College’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion last week issued a 40-page glossary of terms officials said they had created to spell out a common agreement on how to define words and phrases often used at the small liberal arts campus. The “Common Language Guide,” emailed to the roughly 1,900 undergrads at the private college, broke down pages of terms under categories such as “isms,” “race and ethnicity, “gender identity,” “class,” “politics and policy,” “global power and inequality” and “disability.”

DEFINITIONS:

Equality: “An equality emphasis often ignores historical and structural factors that benefit some social groups/communities and harm other social groups/communities,” the document reads, seeming to dissuade students from treating each other equally.

Race: a social construction (not a biological phenomenon) developed by European (white) scientists intended to rank humans based on perceived biological differences rooted in appearance, skin tone and ancestral homelands. With the intent to subjugate particular communities, race “scientists” asserted that whites/Europeans were the most evolved and blacks/Africans were the least evolved, with Asians existing in the middle. The idea of race is intricately linked with the practice of white supremacy, which continues to have damaging impacts on communities of color globally.

Biological Determinism: The idea that all human behavior is innate, determined by biology. Biological determinism has been used to oppress marginalized groups (e.g. as a justification for slavery, the displacement and genocide of native populations, and denying women’s suffrage) using biased science. It has been associated with scientific racism, eugenics and the maintenance of strict gender roles.

Homonationalism: A concept introduced by Jasbir K. Puar to name the political deployments of certain kinds of LGBTQ+ people in the service of U.S. nationalist and imperialist agendas. Used to explain the ways in which cis-gay and lesbian veterans of the Iraq War were celebrated as proof of American exceptionalism in contrast to racist/orientalist discourse about Iraqi combatants and other people in Central Asia racialized outside of U.S. understandings of whiteness.

Heterosexism: A pervasive system of beliefs and practices that manifest across societal/cultural, institutional and individual domains that centers and normalizes heterosexuality. Enacts violence against all other sexualities through their erasure, pathologization and invalidation. Provides various advantages to heterosexual/straight folks.

Reverse Oppression: There is no such thing as reverse oppression. Oppression is predicated upon access to institutional power. Marginalized communities do not have access to institutional power. For example, women can be as prejudiced as men, but women cannot be “just as sexist as men,” because they do not hold political, economic and institutional power.

Cissexism: The system of belief that cisgender individuals are the privileged class and are more natural, normal or acceptable than transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary and/or gender-nonconforming people. This belief manifests as the systematic denial of rights to trans and nonbinary people and their routine mistreatment.

Fragile masculinity: A state of requiring affirmation of one’s masculinity and manhood in order to feel power and dominance. Rooted in sexism, heterosexism and misogyny, fragile masculinity is the fear of being associated with femininity and queerness, or any traits that oppose those which are socially constructed as masculine. For example, men being hesitant to cry is an example of fragile masculinity.

Reminder that this document is, by US law, TREASON. It actively supports the ethnic genocide of Americans. The people who wrote it must be executed.