It’s becoming all too common for people to silence others over what they believe is and is not offensive. In most cases, it’s the older generation telling the younger generation to ‘stop overreacting’ or to ‘grow some tough skin.’ But the thing is, that’s what your generation did, and look where we are now: insert something about a misogynistic bigot being elected as president.
Fortunately, because of social media, teens are more aware of what’s going on in the world today. I mean, we literally have a news app preset into our phones that send updates when there’s any new breaking news story. We hear it. We see it. We’re aware of it. But also, we are so, so tired of it. As a generation that sees all the bad in the world, we want to do anything we can to promote or create some good. Which is why when we see something remotely offensive/ discriminating/ hurtful, we want to put it to a stop. We want it to end. So we speak up, we say “Hey, I don’t think it’s right for you to say that,” only for an elder to say “No, everyone says that, it’s fine”. As if just because everyone says it, it makes it okay. May we look back fifty years ago when the ‘N word’ was used discriminatingly by white people? It was commonly used then, so that must have made it okay, right?
So we shut up, we leave it alone. Because we tried to do something and we just got shot down. But the thing is, we want change. We crave it. Without it, we feel useless, everything does. The most infuriating part of our lives is having to be a bystander as the world around us falls deeper and deeper into chaos, because there’s nothing we want more than to have the power to put it to a stop. It’s hearing about what’s going on in Aleppo and watching the violence unfold because there’s nothing more that we can do other than donate and send our prayers. It’s hearing your queer, black friend in America crying down the phone to you as she tells you a racist homophobe has been elected president of the United States of America. It’s finding out your muslim friend had someone refuse to sit next to them on the train today because their was a possibility of them being a ‘terrorist’.
It’s the feeling of being powerless in a world where the most powerful do nothing to stop it.
Recently, Target released a jumper that read ‘OCD, Obsessive Christmas Disorder’ mocking the illness Obsessive compulsive disorder. A twitter user who found the jumper extremely offensive tweeted Target asking them to not ‘sell my (their) illness as a fashion statement’. Seems perfectly acceptable, right? Apparently not. The backlash the tweeter received was extremely insensitive, but not shocking. They mainly consisted of people telling them to ‘get over it’ or to ‘stop being such a p*ssy’. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say the people saying these things were not sufferers of the disorder themselves, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say they didn’t have much insight into what it was like living with the disorder. The tweet was later deleted.
So why is it, that we must accept the mocking of a mental health disorder? The person with the disorder suffers, they live with the pain of it, so why must they become accustomed to the mocking of it? We need to end the stigma. If a person is offended, you don’t get to tell them if they can or cannot be offended, and you in no way get to tell them if you can not be offended by it yourself.
If there’s one piece of advice I could give you, it would be to keep fighting against hatred. You have a voice. You have power. You can be the beginning of the end of something bad in this world. Don’t let them silence you when you are trying to do good. Don’t become disenfranchised.
You find it offensive? Tell them to get over it. Not the other way around.
