What, Me Offend? That’s Preposterous.

Friday, May 18, 2007

By Cate Lunt

It’s a depressing world out there: all kinds of offensive thoughts swirling about in all kinds of heads; logocentrism, heterosexism, and phallocracy run amok, and the worst, most cynical invective directed at witnesses for justice simply because they care about issues of importance. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m an idealist, and no mere facts can shake my fundamental convictions. Still, there comes a point when even an idealist must think that humanity—and here I must single out the inhabitants of this campus—are breathtakingly, unteachably ignorant.

What drove me to this conclusion was a stunning and cynical attempt by the reactionary right to smear me. Now, who on this campus is the most vociferous, take-no-prisoners advocate on behalf on marginalized communities and peoples? Well, I don’t want to brag, but that would be me, as any honest person would conclude. Who then (and here it might help to put on the hat of a right-wing hate-mongerer) would be the most outrageous person to accuse of bigotry and hate? Well, as it turns out, that would also be me.

Here is what happened. One late evening, I walked into a fraternity basement with the intention of exercising my rights and of course correcting any instance of ignorance I might encounter. Par for the course, though I had had, I must admit, quite a few drinks—maybe even too many, it could be argued. I could no longer, for example, shut my mouth completely without it flopping open, and from time to time my legs spontaneously gave way. I sauntered up to a few other partygoers, and here, I’m afraid, my narrative got a little postmodern—to the extent that I can’t exactly remember what I did until I awoke in a bush by the library the next morning. Not my finest hour, maybe, but then again it’s only the radical right that would have us believe that activists can’t have fun every now and then.

I received a startling e-mail, however, from one of the fraternity “brothers,” who had a complaint with my behavior. He was vague, though, so I asked for an elaboration. The story he spun was that I had started dancing around and pointing at people before shouting racial slurs at them. He said that I must have uttered about two dozen unique ethnic insults at various people before a female rugger clocked me, and I was kicked outside.

My first reaction, understandably, was to laugh. I don’t even know a single racial slur. I’ve heard them, of course, mostly in movies, and if I had a mind-reading device, I’m sure I’d hear plenty at your average normative get-together, but my mind is wired such that it doesn’t really retain them, the way it retains, say, dozens of Emma Goldman quotations. So, the very idea seemed absurd.

However, I began to feel a little uneasy. The idea of “false accusations” has been used to by the radical right to excuse privileged people who have supposedly “not committed a crime”—yeah, right. But there are times when accusations are false yet are perceived as true, especially when progress is on the line. Could this scuttle my reputation as an activist par excellence? Would Campus Progress get wind of the little incident and deep-six the juicy internship they had lined up for me? Clearly, I had to nip this in the bud.

“You,” I wrote sternly back to the primitive “frat” individual, “have picked the wrong person’s righteousness to impugn. I am known around campus, and, indeed, the world—see what I’ve done for a Thai sex workers’ union, my indefatigable recycling habits, etc. (I can provide a more detailed list upon request)—for my unimpeachable human rights record. I am being trained as a human rights lawyer, and Campus Progress has accepted me as an intern for the very reason that I reek of justice. If I were somehow to lose the ability to form memories while intoxicated, it is more likely that I would organize a protest against stereotypes than to even stand in the same room as a person who spoke a racial slur. Bearing all this in mind, I am, as a womyn, shocked. As a comp-lit major, I am appalled. As a citizen of the planet earth, I am sickened. As a peace activist, I am surprised. As a feminist, I am vexed. As a human being, I am moved to incalculable sorrow and rage. As a spirit in the material world, I am saddened. Now, you’ll have to excuse me, because I have more significant things to do—such as change the world for the better—than answer baseless charges made by “frat” people against progressives. I won’t even dignify these charges with a response.”

Well, that should have set the record straight, but the snot wrote back to me that he didn’t care how I excused my behavior but that I wasn’t welcome back. Got that? That’s right: I, a peace activist and the savior of oppressed peoples, am barred from entering a completely negligible building on the basis of some completely fabricated story. Of course they waited until all my progressive friends had gone to sleep, around three-thirty in the morning. If there’s one thing I admire about the right, it’s their amoral ruthlessness. The lesson is clear. The left must start framing people just to make it even. But of what crime would we accuse them? Caring about people?

What, Me Offend? That’s Preposterous.

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