anyone awake? need a reality check

This survey showed up on my dash: Right Wing Authoritarian Survey

My--possibly utterly insane and/or ultra-dense tumblr response: read here

Alternately, I'm putting the text of my response under the cut.


4.55% Literally all my answers were very strongly agree/very strongly disagree, which overall bothers me.

Also: what the everloving fuck is this survey?

I get this isn’t meant to be a nuanced view, but–are you kidding me? These questions are geared toward responses from Christians, likely Protestant, and specifically those who go to church regularly not just for spiritual guidance but also as part of their culture and social groups.

Let me repeat: what. the. fuck?

Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly.

That question is super wrong on a lot of levels, but just to start: there is no way to answer this without assuming Christian is the ultimate standard and no one can be better but no doubt--no doubt-–they can be equally good. Not are equally; can be equally.

And some, I assume, are good people. In case that wasn’t obvious.

It also assumes no one who goes to church regularly has ever rebelled against established religions, which is not at all the entire basis of the entire fucking Protestant faith.

Context: I’m a devout Christian; my faith was and is a choice I made and still make, blah blah blah, and I don’t go to church (though I used to when a kid; my parents weren’t churchgoers but for reasons I still don’t know I made them get up at seven to take me to Sunday school at the Lutheran church for years. Yeah, they were baffled too but the sleep deprivation made them malleable).

With that context: that question is bullshit.

For that matter, most of them are. Especially when they’re the same damn question with different words.

A. Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.

B. The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.

C. What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.

Bolding mine because I’m trying to work out how the fuck anyone would answer these three questions differently. A is probably about homosexuality, B is likely women’s rights/feminism/abortion, C is–’true path’ generally refers to salvation only being found through Jesus Christ so would be anti-everyone-not-that-Protestant-flavor-usually in the Baptist/Pentacostl family, but I could be reading into it way too much from depressing experience with such.

Also: no question that could even vaguely imply a concern regarding race and racism. Homosexuals and Gays (and women) are very well represented and also animal rights, though not anything environmental.

Am I being super dense here and missing something that makes this an actual survey and not what seems to be a loyalty test for Baptists and evangelicals to see how they feel about a Christian-fascist future that is coming? Like, tell me if I’m being stupid because honestly, feeling stupid would be super awesome compared to vaguely uneasy and creeped the fuck out.

I really want to feel stupid, in case that wasn’t clear. Please.


Like, yeah, I get this is a right wing authoritarian tendency survey but...to answer half these questions with any kind of accuracy, you have to already be in a very narrow (very white) Christian Protestant demographic that already is right wing authoritarian (the atheist question alone was ridiculous, but 'homosexuals' and 'gays' gave it that 'oh God what' touch). I'm a white Christian and I can't answer several of the questions as written with any degree of accuracy because of the base assumptions of the questions which is either a.) utterly foreign to me or b.) repulsive is an understatement like you have no idea.

So those familiar with surveys: am I just not getting the methodology here on what it's doing?

Note: I took the Dark Triad test and I'm glad to report my psychopathic tendencies are in the bottom two percent, my narcissism in the eleventh percentile, and my Machiavellian is around the 66th which seems not too worrying but to be fair, I really liked The Prince.

Comments

[twistedchick]

This looked to me as if it were quotes taken from speeches or sermons from the late 1800s thruogh about 50 years ago, and arranged in a certain pattern so that you couldn't just automatically hit agree or disagree. It's sneaky that way. But the terminology is not current at all, the issues aren't current and it is definitely a white-people-only test. Or so it looks to me.

I also got 4.55%

[brooksmoses]

Yup -- digging into it, it looks like it was basically written in 1947, except for the "sneaky that way" aspect which was a 1981 revision.