Hey Assholes, What’s Happening to Leslie Jones is Not Okay

If I were more eloquent, or perhaps just better informed on racial issues and feminism and the language they use, I could say something like, “I am using my white privilege to talk to you about the sexism and racism Leslie Jones is facing.” 

But I’m not, so I can’t. And you know what? I think that’s okay, at least for now. I don’t need any special language and I don’t need to be any particular skin colour to identify what is acceptable human behavior sometimes and what is not. 

For example: the behavior that people are using with Leslie Jones? It is not acceptable. 

Godsforbid, we ruined people’s childhood forever by rebooting a movie. We’ve also rebooted Willy Wonka, Tron, and Spiderman three GD times in my lifetime, and I didn’t hear nearly so much whining about that. No, we heard so much about Ghostbusters because it has women in it. 

WOMEN.

WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO.

Let’s talk super briefly about the word feminism, a word that I’ve stopped using because people can’t read dictionaries. But because I’m obsessive like this, let’s share with the class anyway.

fem·i·nism – ˈfeməˌnizəm/

noun

1. the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

    

See, equality. Not superiority. I’m willing to extend a bit of latitude because of the misinterpretation of the word over the years, BUT if you maintain that you hate feminism on the grounds that you don’t believe women should have rights equal to men, well, that’s Asshole behavior, with a capital A. And not only is it Asshole behavior, it’s Asshole behavior reserved for a darker age when women were treated like property and Assholes might probably die a humiliating and painful death from syphilis.

It’s not behavior for humans who want to pretend that they’re civilized and living in an age where we could go to the moon, if we felt like it.

Anyway, it was bound to happen that someone thought it’d be cute to dish a little of what we’ve been dealing with in a movie. That’s how we got a cutesy role reversal slash reboot of Ghostbusters. Reversal of expectations is actually a classic comedy device. Ghostbusters v. 1.0 even made use of this device way back in 1984, such as when Peter Venkman showed up to seduce Dana and ended up trying to avoid being seduced by her.

See? It’s funny because the OPPOSITE of what we thought was going to happen happened.

I could talk all damn day about movies; instead I’ve got to talk about people acting like a bunch of thunderingly racist and misogynistic chunderheads. Somehow it’s become, dare I say, cool for young men to be Assholes to women these days. And to be a super extra-special Asshole to a black woman? Well, I suppose for kids doing their best impression of a sociopath out to cause trouble, Leslie Jones looks like an easy 2-for-1.

Racism is a big problem in “civilized” America. The saddest part is that I’m not even talking about the institutionalized racism us white people practice, or even the unintentional racism that we have to fight in our brains consciously as part of the good fight on our way to becoming enlightened beings.

No, I’m talking in THIS DAY AND AGE, in 2016, when we COULD SUPER AMAZING THINGS LIKE ERADICATE POLIO (and probably solve a good chunk of humanity’s hunger and homeless problems too, if it weren’t for the people-being-a-PITA factor), we are still having to deal with flat out KKK-loving, Confederate-flag-waving trolls with a superiority – or maybe it’s an inferiority – complex. 

It’s been over a month since Leslie Jones got forced off Twitter by such assholes as this fine example here: 

@JBomb11 @Lesdoggg #DicksOutForHarambe pic.twitter.com/bpAkJuzQ1v

— #MAGA Man (@MAGAMan_X) July 19, 2016

Leslie, I don’t understand this. I really don’t.

I’m not a perfect person. I’m white. I understand I’ve got issues seeing some things because I’ve got privilege. I feel like I’ve got 18 left feet and I’m playing a step-stone version of Minesweeper when discussing the more delicate and complex issues around racism. And when I was younger (and much stupider), I said things that present-me would go back in a flying DeLorean at 88 mph to slap myself for if I could.

But this? Calling a human being an ape because of her skin color? 

If you would do this, now, as a conscious adult claiming to be a member of civilized society, you’re a bad person.

What is wrong with you?

I wanted to vomit when all of this was happening. Imagine me picking up my jaw off the desk when I opened the news two days ago and discovered it is STILL GOING ON. Once again she’s being attacked, and why? Is it because she’s a woman? Because she’s black. Because she would dare ruin someone’s mental image of a decades-old movie, perhaps.

But the reason that bothers me most is because this feels like a failure on our parts – those of us who think we’re the “good guys”… or at least, in practice, hopefully the “okay ones.”

We’re not being good enough human beings to be able to stop the overt racism that should have died out long ago in its tracks. And if we can’t do that much, how do we work on all the tiny things we’re doing wrong in our private lives and minds that compound the racism problem?

Unfortunately, the only real tool we have to construct the image of appropriate human behavior is our own imperfect behavior. And the only way we have to enforce it is collective social approval. Just as we think of murder and theft as behavior counterproductive to a safe and happy society, we have to strongly disapprove of behavior that dehumanizes and abuses other human beings. 

We can’t forget to lose sight of compassion, either, because all of us will continue to make mistakes on this road to becoming better at being good human beings and improving our relationships with one another. We will say something thoughtless. We will do something that hurts another. It’s inevitable, and we will have to grant people second chances and give them a chance to make amends.

But we do have to start out by saying: Hey assholes, this behavior here? This is not okay.

It’s not.