“Don’t say that, you’ll make people feel uncomfortable!” “You shouldn’t speak that way, what are people going to think?” “Be quiet, we’re talking right now.” “You know, you talk a lot.””Why are you so bothered by it, it’s not that serious, it was just a joke. Can’t you take a joke?” “That’s not ______, I’m just giving an opinion!”

I know exactly what you’re doing.

I know you’ve been socialized this way, to think people are inferior to you. And I know that you’re doing what you always do, have always been doing, and have been subconsciously taught to do. When somebody who is ‘beneath’ you speaks out, you are so quick to silence them. When they point out the flaws inherent in a system that places you at the top, you punish them because if they talk, you’ll start to feel insecure about what exactly you’ve done to deserve what you have, you start to question your value.

When they speak ‘feminist’ to you, you cringe and mock and sneer and tell everyone just exactly what you think their place should be, all the while hurling violent slurs and getting angry because you can’t muster up proper rhetoric. You stamp your feet and spout the same old bullshit that all the ignorant people just like you have been doing for years. You use scientifically debunked myths and biased articles and fun facts that you picked up from south park, fox news, the MRA subreddit, and all the rest of these fountains of knowledge to prove your point. And when somebody tries to tell you otherwise, you throw a glorified temper tantrum. 

You say that you’re rational, you don’t let emotions clog your thoughts like those *hateful comment towards a group* do. No, you’re the pinnacle of social science; you are biologically engineered by a series of accidents to be more rational, more logical, more intellectual, more privileged than the actual groups of people who experience the things that you pretend to know about. You use pseudoscience, and your own special brand of koolaid to back it up. You’re different, you’re not like those other schmucks. You try to trivialize, dismiss, and devalue genuine concerns and actual people who are being affected by this. You think that makes you unique, but in actuality, all the words you’re spewing has been built and shaped, and force-fed to you even before you were born. 

You don’t get to blame the victims and give up responsibility to get away with bullshit when it suits you, and then demand that you be treated with respect afterwards. You don’t get to treat the people who are being directly affected by the systems put in place that they are being irrational. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

When I speak up about topics that I have actually experienced, gone through, lived with, and you feel uncomfortable for me or anyone else calling you out about your own ignorance, for talking over your attempts to shut us up? Make it impossible to bury your head in the sand and ignore what’s really going on in this picture? Good.

I want you to feel uncomfortable.