I stood up on a stage in front of 190 people and suddenly felt all of the weight I had gained in the past year and a half of recovery. And I got mad at myself for thinking that and tried to put that out of my head. I set my face to address Ed (he’s my eating disorder) and the audience of my peers and I felt simultaneously badass and totally exposed.
If you were at President Quillen’s address to the campus, you know what happened. And if you weren’t, you read about it on Yik Yak. And you probably saw my initials. Maybe it was Malia Dickson… but she’s not blonde. So I assume it was me. I’d like to make it clear–the most important of this week of events kicking off the year was not people’s responses on Yik Yak. I write about this to offer the experience from the other side of the screen. I promise I won’t pull an Emily Osment from ABC Family’s Cyberbully–it’s not that dramatic (this is not to say that online bullying isn’t a devastating thing and that the depression and tendencies it can engender are not real and terrible– it’s to say ABC Family is the teen equivilent of Lifetime Movie Network).
I write to connect my experience with those who experience this bullshit every day. I write from a place of loving the Yak and firmly believing it has a place on college campuses. I write from the place of trying to find my place in life and on this campus when I’m worrying about much more than my weight and shape. I write from a place of being acutely aware of “ad hominem arguments,” “straw-manning,” and the “coddling of the American college mind.” I write from my niche that I’m still not even slightly comfortable in.
I walked off stage and checked Yik Yak. “MD all she do is judge” and people trying to figure out if MD was the “blonde bitch crying about sombreros or something like that” and people saying that “that would be classic MD” and that it’s “unfortunate” how “oblivious” I am about how “loco” I am.
I know, I got a little confused too.
What wasn’t confusing was how shitty I felt. It wasn’t some angsty teenaged emotions, it was a complicated mess of the following:
“I’m trying to get more people involved, I don’t judge them.” “Oh my God, do I judge people?” “Am I coming off as too much?” “What if I am too much… maybe I should stop eating.” (Welcome to the mind of a recovering anorexic–it’s a scary and senseless place). “Should I stop talking about things?” “Why wouldn’t people talk to me about this stuff?” “Am I too judgemental?” “I’m too judgmental.” “Maybe I should just stop talking… I should probably just shut up.” “I’ll just stop with all of this political stuff, it’s not worth it if people don’t like it.”
“No.”
That no was in response to other yaks I saw when I stopped my pity-party and looked at the feed again. Yes, I’m addicted to Yik Yak and no, I’m not ashamed. After what had seemed like just a few minutes, there was a much larger debate raging that had gone beyond those sombreros I am just always crying about.
Davidson had exploded into one of the most popular conversations in political arenas right now: political correctness and teasing apart “being offended.” There was so much, and it followed in the general trajectory of the broader American discourse: “You don’t have the right to not be offended.” “I’m just hurt.” “Guys, we need to stop partying on St. Patrick’s day, it’s offensive to the Irish.” “Quit telling me I’m a bad person for not agreeing with you, emotions aren’t facts.”
I read through the above yaks, comments, and ups and downs. I commented on some and couldn’t sleep. Something was missing from this, and something’s been missing in the broader conversation that people like Donald Trump are leading about political correctness (and apparently by association, liberals and progressives). So I did what I always do when I need someone to talk me down and get my “goddamn head out of the clouds.”
I called my dad.
“Madi, you can’t make ad hominem arguments and expect to be taken seriously. Do you ever consider the other side?”
I couldn’t decide which meme to use, so I used both. Deal.
Which hurt, because when people actually engage with me in conversation I try really hard to avoid just blindly pushing my thoughts forward. I remembered watching my grandfather do that and thinking it was the most annoying thing ever. Years later I realized it was because he had already considered what you’d had to say; he’d read articles, done research, created media, created legislation etc. on the matter. While I respected that, I still remembered how it felt to be on the other end of a conversation with him, being interrupted and dismissed as “just wrong.” I still remembered how much that sucked.
Shit, was I becoming my grandfather?
“Dad, saying someone is ignorant of their social location and the privilege or lack thereof that comes with that place isn’t calling out the person as a person–it’s pointing out that a big part of their argument is missing.”
I thought back to every time I got upset on campus– whether that was being triggered by women refusing to talk about anything else besides exercise and food and feeling so powerless to find safe spaces on campus to eat my food. Or whether that was watching people I cared about feel like there were spaces on this campus where they weren’t even considered… not that they weren’t cared about or respected at one level… just totally disregarded as an important part of whatever event had happened. Or whether that was hearing the anger coming from students of color and the frustration, exasperation, and exhaustion I’ve heard so many verbalize about how to engage people in conversation when we’re coming from different places, and different levels of awareness about those places.
I thought back to all those times and I realized: it’s not that campus is too PC, or that we’re being coddled (if someone requests trigger warnings on classic literature, we might have to re-examine that claim), it’s that we’re each basing our decisions and informing our personal values and behaviors with different levels of awareness about how we fit into American society and the ways in which our behaviors every day affect that and others’ places in American society. Not only that, but we are valuing the importance of that awareness so differently based on our past experiences. The saliency of our individual place in American society is not universal and I’d encourage you to think of what pieces from your past and of yourself have contributed to your having to think about it on the daily, or think about every so often as you enter very specific spaces.
Just food for thought. All from the yak.