A Brief History of Anachronism

(Note- this is generally my creative writing blog. I have to be pretty enraged in order to express my non-creative opinions on here. This is one of those times)

So, recently (in the past hour), two people of my acquaintance shared a gif. The supertitle was “When people call me a heterophobe” and the image flippantly declared not caring.

Now, I understand GIFs are supposed to depict silliness and are generally meant to communicate a commonly held sense of humor. But, let’s do a little experiment. Replace the word  “heterophobe” with “homophobe”. Now, we have what the internet would generally consider a hateful, miserable little piece of hate propaganda on our hands, don’t we?

I am lucky enough in my human experience to have many friends of many origins and orientations. I have absolutely delightful friends, gay, lesbian, straight, bi, or otherwise. I don’t consider any of my friends’ defining characteristics to be their orientation (or, for that matter, the color of their skin, religious affiliations, gender, socioeconomic class, political  leanings, or nationality). I pick my friends for the content of their character (and, if we’re talking sociology, probably a little bit based on who I am likely to encounter due to my own set of label adjectives).

I can also, then, genuinely assert that I know assholes from all walks of life as well.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, suggesting that we should throw around hate language about people who are gay or bi or trans. We shouldn’t throw it around because someone’s of color, Hispanic, in the 99%, Jewish, Muslim…. I think I’ve belabored the point.

But my opinion on hate language does not exist solely because those groups are considered to be minority or outside my own demographic. I don’t believe in throwing around hate language at all. I spent the past 4 years studying how words are a social experience, and what those words can do. I know what words can do, and I work my damnedest to make my students conscientious of the importance of speaking and writing.

You can’t fight for justice through hate. You can’t call yourself an activist for equality and then exclude people. If someone is straight, white, or Christian, or male,  you do not get an automatic pass to be rude and uncouth to them. If you really want equality, if you really fight hate, then you need to do it for the benefit of everyone, not just the section you consider marginalized.

You can still spew hate. Go for it. It seems pretty popular. But then, go ahead and admit that you perpetuate the differences and the barriers in our society. You can’t have it both ways.

Everyone understand that? Good, here’s a picture of a panda.