Minorities or Abjections in Democracy, Citizenship and Education

 By Joseph Lorduy (8th semester FIGRI student, Democracy, Citizenship and Education elective)

Throughout this class there have been many discussions surrounding one central point: minorities. On many occasions, students have been discussing the elderly community, the LGBTQA+ community, and specifically the Trans community, the incarcerated and other vulnerable groups. Therefore, the reflection I’m presenting with this paper focuses on knowing the roots of the mistreatment and denegation that these groups have received historically, so that we can acknowledge this problematic area in a better way to formulate some assessments. 

Theoretically, we’ll be using the sex / gender dichotomy model, provided and criticized by American philosopher Judith Butler and, also, her contribution to post-structuralist theoretical currents. To explain these two in a linear and easier way, the dichotomy model is based on the subordinate relationship between these subjects. 

For example: 

Strong	Weak
Men	Women
Masculine	Feminine
West	East
Young	Old
Rich	Poor
Nature	Nurture
Penis	Vagina

Butler states that this dichotomy represents how systematically sex and gender has been structured, just by comparing strong to weak. However, there is a category that she formulates which is not taken into account and it represents everything that stays out of that dichotomy and that is not made visible. This category is called the abjections; here are some examples:

transsexual, transgender, non-binary, homosexuality, pansexuality, bisexuality, intersexuality, hermaphroditism

Abjections are the most vulnerable groups in the world, because instead of being in the "weak" category, they are unknown or unnatural for the system and its structure. That’s why the discourse of post-structuralist theory is so important, because it tries to deconstruct the mindset that people have about what it is like to be a man or woman, and also how these social constructs work, as well as the exclusion of abjections.  

In this way, the common point I found between this model and the class of Democracy, Citizenship and Education is that men, or the stronger category, have a political superiority over women. This means that they have more opportunities to make political decisions, the law will defend them or will ignore their abuses, and they are mostly the political authority in our societies. Liberal democracy tries to reveal this issue but deeply fails to change the structure, because the issue doesn’t lie in ideologies or ways of governing, but more on the societal constitution of the world, or at least the western or globalized world. 

Therefore, newer generations have the responsibility to change people's mindsets, and primarily the mindsets of younger people, so that movements like queerism and feminism are taken more seriously and recognized, respected and treated as equals. We need to stop basing discrimination on science and “objective” discoveries, because even science is conditioned by the western paradigm  and the dichotomy of sex / gender.

We need to live and let live, because the entitlement that people have regarding issues that don’t relate to them is one of the reasons why there is so much hatred, discrimination and denegation against minorities.  

References: 

• Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 519-531.