I enjoy calling awful people out on the Internet, as hundreds of people saw on the seventh post of the Facebook page “UC Berkeley Hook-Ups.” As a student who never had the opportunity to practice speech and debate, I am rarely the most articulate person in the room. I am perpetually the womyn who winces a few hours after a verbal spar, realizing what I could have said to blow the opposing view out of the water.
Luckily, serious arguments don’t happen often — I am involved in the Gender Equity Resource Center, the queer community and the progressive political community, all of which are far safer spaces than campus or society as a whole.
Offline, I can still usually say what I would say on the Internet, so I don’t really take advantage of the anonymity … then again, usually I don’t run into as much problematic commentary offline.
Because I still fumble over words in the real world, the socially awkward high school student in me revels in getting tons of “likes” on Facebook, “reblogs” on Tumblr or “retweets” on Twitter. I used to get offended, hurt and angry when misogynistic or homophobic comments were directed at me. Back in the day, I used to hurl insults and anger right back. I like to think I’m past that now, and I can laugh off most of the most recent escapades, but the anger is certainly still there, even when the insults aren’t.
I am used to being told I somehow don’t understand sarcasm or that I just need to lighten up. I am used to my anger being attributed to PMS and “hysteria.” (By the way, not all womyn have uteruses, ovaries or vaginas, so that stupid stereotype just falls flat.)
I am used to navigating through life under the burden of terms like “slut,” “bitch,” “cunt” and “whore.” Most adult womyn are used to all of these microagressions. It’s not to say that we accept these labels and stereotypes or, in the case of the slurs, want to reclaim them — it’s that it is physically exhausting to push back against them.
But if I’m not going to do it, who is? I genuinely worry about womyn and queer folks who see the same disgusting comments, statuses and photos that I do but don’t realize that other people out there see just how awful these things are.
On a good day, I have the emotional energy to call someone out on his or her bullshit and brave their storm of ridiculous insults. It’s not like I’m bored, it’s not like I have free time and it’s not like I don’t get outlets for myself as an angry queer womyn.
I don’t just do it for others who might be too timid, too tired or too incognizant of the effects. I do it to remind some people that their privileges can and will be checked at any time. I do it to remind these rude, desperate people that their entitlement is going to be short-lived. I do it to remind all people that those who are marginalized and oppressed have a long history of fighting back in whatever way we are able.
I’m certainly not alone in calling people out. I have my own privileges that give me the agency to feel comfortable and safe in enough circumstances to bring attention to these issues. I am a white, cisgender, able-bodied person from a middle-upper-class background attending a prestigious university. Even as a queer womyn, I never had an issue identifying as queer or as a feminist. My parents have both taken turns being the “breadwinner” for the household, showing me from an early age that a womyn was just as capable as a man and deserved the same treatment; I had no trouble “coming out” to the people I wanted to “come out” to, and no one has forced me to “come out” to people I do not want to “come out” to.
Privileged people are not inherently bad — if we were, I would have a lot of self-loathing to work out. Additionally, an angry white person is perceived far differently from an angry person of color, as has been pointed out to me, which I think is important to consider.
If I say something wrong, I do not go back later and delete it. I do not try to pretend I didn’t say it it. I have certainly said some messed-up things in my life, and insulted people in ways that are never appropriate. But if I have said something controversial, I will either continue to defend it or, if I regret it, apologize for it. As a student, I am continually learning, and I hope that all members of the campus community are too.
Caitlin Quinn is a sophomore at UC Berkeley.
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