As a history student, I don’t entirely agree that any decade is dominantly conservative or progressive. Progress is not entirely linear, sure, but the 2000s was as much a decade of Milk (2008) and Brokeback Mountain (2005) as it was Gran Torino (2008) and The Blind Side (2009).
This doesn’t make it any less hard to feel like I’m not in the 2000s again when the culture wars poisons every part of my life. At work, I have to explain to customers that yes, size 5 purple Knu Skools aren’t gendered. At home, my mother asks me if Michelle Obama is transgender. And more and more in my free time, I feel a little lonelier around other people. I hide my winces at the men and occasional women in my life who throw the r-slur around. I pretend not to see who liked X Instagram reel or Y tweet calling for #darkwoke to “#RAPENETANYAHU“. And yes, I can see what most of you are liking on reels.
More often these days, it is on social media that I see that word. I was scrolling on Instagram last night before bed, as I tend to do, when a post caught my attention. The broad contours were something like this: a screencap of a person talking about how much they don’t like the use of the r-slur (much as I am now), followed by the account scrolling down to a meme ironically using said word. I unfortunately did not have the foresight to save said post to cite here, but I did screenshot some comments that stood out to me:
To be clear, I understand that the internet—most of all, comment sections—should not be taken seriously. I understand that most of these accounts are being facetious or self-aware, as if that absolves them from the pedestrian cruelty of using the r-slur. What I don’t understand is how virulently people will defend their use of the r-slur, as if they are entitled to it. A little treat to reward their otherwise politically correct behavior, like buying a Starbucks coffee after a long day at work. As if empathy should be transactional.
I hope I shouldn’t have to say that this is ridiculous. Absurd, even; perhaps asinine or inane or irrational. The beauty of how language works is that there are countless words for any assortment of definitions, most of which have never been weaponized against minority communities. I would like to coin a new term for this phenomenon: hipster ableism, much like hipster racism or hipster sexism. Most crucially, and much like hipster racism or hipster sexism, the ironic use of prejudice as a punchline is still prejudice.