Telling the generic douchebags from the "isists"

There's a throwaway phrase people use quite a lot these days, but it really is true, it's "haters gonna hate". So often we're looking for the "ism" the explanation for why someone is behaving like a douchbag. But the sad fact is that very often, a large percentage of the hate directed at any minority group has nothing to do with the facts of that minority, and does not come from people who truly hate or have any problem or possibly even understand what social or political or whatever issue that group is deal with.

I will never forget a particular telling example of this from back when I was in secondary (high) school. It was of course always common for the bullies in the class to pick on the vulnerable kids, whether they were the kids with special needs, or who wore glasses, the word "gay" was frequently thrown around as an insult, in fact often "gay" was just used as a synonym for "shit" "euuurrgh that's gay!" generally just meant that the person thought something was crap, that it sucked etc. But there was plenty of gay material for teasing / bullying, jokes as clever as "[insert name] you dropped your gay card" to just randomly calling someone out as being gay - not because they acted gay or effeminate in any way, or were out of the closet actually gay - but just as a form of bullying, and would then go on (I always thought quite amusingly) to imply that not only were you gay, but you must also by definition fancy them and be a serial rapist, the scene would generally play out something along the lines of, "Oh look out, he's gay, cover your arses everyone." In a similar way you could have said that there was a lot of racism in my school, and that many of my "classmates" were racists, the word "packy" would get used a lot, against anyone with brown skin, it's not so hot now I guess but at the time, that word in England was probably about as loaded as the "n-word" is in the US. I had a friend who was English but his parents were from Bangladesh, and he would get called it, even though he was a pretty popular kid, both of us shrugged it off, I thought the whole thing was so stupid that I used to call him a Bangy, just as a way of lampooning the whole thing, but again the kids calling him this incredibly racist and offensive word, or telling racist joke (probably learned from their parents) weren't themselves racist, kids just rip the shit out of each other, bullies do it especially, but even among friends it's common to tease each other, to some extent it's meant with affection, at the very least there's no malice behind it, no deep hatred of an entire race of people, it was generally just kids bonding and screwing around.

But on one occasion a (different) friend of mine came into school (in England we have school uniforms btw, and at our school there was either like officially school branded school uniforms, or just a general dress code, such as you had to wear black socks and a black or burgundy sweatshirt or jumper etc.) wearing a black V-neck jumper, when the official sweatshirt was a crew neck, so not many if anyone else was wearing a V-neck. He got teased and bullied and hassled over him wearing this sweatshirt and every ridiculous joke or piece of hate or bullying you can possibly think of directed against a person supposedly because of him wearing this V-neck shirt, this went on for 3 days, until he just gave in and conformed with the herd and didn't wear it anymore.

Now did any of my "classmates" have any issue or problem with V-neck jumpers, or any particularly strong feelings about fashion at all? Of course not, there's no minority group of V-neck wearers, and they face no systemic oppression, kids have throughout the decades been bullied for not wearing the right brand of sportswear, or making poor fashion choices but none of these bullies actually cared about the subject matter. It was just something noticeably different about that person, and therefore something that could be ridiculed. Stand out in any way and a bully has a target if he decides he wants to pick on you. But those bullies didn't pick on my friend because he was wearing a V-neck, they picked on him, cos he wasn't one of the cool kids and was always being picked on about something or other, this particular time it just happened to be the utterly absurd example of his jumper having the wrong neckline.

So why am I writing all this, just to try and remind people to take that particular troll comment with a pinch of salt, and don't immediately jump on "homophobic" or "transphobic" or "racist" or "sexist" or "misogynistic" maybe that person who said or did that thing really does have deeply held, incredibly misguided beliefs / views about a particular minority group, but, maybe just maybe, they're just a little moron troll trying to stir up some shit and get a reaction. And by assuming their part of some massive group of intolerant assholes and responding to it as if it was a legitimate attack against your sexuality or gender or political or religious affiliation or race etc, you're likely giving the troll just what they want. And if you publicise their comments by calling them out on it, you're just likely to attract genuine hate from people who do actually have a problem with you, and of course more trolls will jump on-board at the same time, to ensure maximum drama and distress for all.

So remember kids, yes some people are racist, and yes some people are homophobes, some are transphobic, some are misogynistic, some are xenophobic, some are bigoted, and some are religious nutbags, but some people are just non-specific or non-affiliated assholes. They'll jump on whatever bandwagon is coming by. And if they decide specifically to target you will look for anything different about you and use that as a jumping off point. The best thing you can do with these people is just ignore them, and try to recognise them for what they are, don't let yourself be fooled into thinking there's a much larger mass of people who hate your minority than there really is. It would have been easy to look at the fellow student in my school and conclude that they were all racist, homophobic, v-neck hating assholes. But the truth was that they were kids, they didn't really know how they felt about or what they thought or believed about anything, and although I'm really not in touch with any of the kids from my old school. It's incredibly rare (in this country at least) for me to run into someone of my age or younger who is in the least bit homophobic or has any issue with homosexuality, and the same is almost true for transphobia, that's a little bit more common, but not much, I doubt if I actually turned up at a class reunion as the pansexual, atheist, woman that I am now, that a single one of them would have a bad thing to say, despite so many of them being little assholes when I was a kid. And the generation younger than me, definitely couldn't give a fuck what gender I am, or present as, or who I choose to sleep with, or what I believe.

Sometimes it can seem like the whole world is against you, but the reality is, it's probably just a few loud mouthed assholes and the rest of the world is along for the ride, so don't worry too much, keep fighting the good fight. Quite often changing minds isn't all that hard, because they really don't need much of a push, they never really held the belief with any conviction they were just following the crowd.