Why what The Onion did matters.
After posting about my horror and disgust that The Onion, in a tweet during Oscar night, called beautiful, young, talented Quvenzhané Wallis the “c” word, the response from several friends was “what does it matter,” some including the hashtags #firstworldproblems, others making fun of anyone who would get upset over what The Onion does. But I am posting this to say it damn well matters and it matters more than you might think.
First of all, the child (key word here- child) is only nine years old and that word is so highly sexualized and derogatory. But if that is not bad enough the undertones are even worse. What matters most is that it was a gendered insult. The person tweeting for The Onion would NEVER have used the derogatory word “f-ggot” in reference to a gay person or the N-word for a person of color. That person would not have had the momentary slip to think “that might be funny” because we have been sensitized in this society to offensive terminology regarding homosexuality and race, and rightly so. But that person DID think it was okay to use a gendered insult to attack Ms. Wallis, it was okay to attack her as a female. And this is why it matters. It matters because someone thought this was okay, and had this occurred to an individual that was not underage it would have been laughed about and forgotten.
This comment shows that the fight for equality is far from over, and that we, as women- with even little girls not being exempt- will face name-calling and degradation just because of our physiology. The fact is that if we overlook gendered insults we can never hope to reduce the rape percentages in this country. Because if we can degrade women by our words, then our actions come next. And that matters. As for the hashtag, this is not a first world problem, this is a world wide problem. The fact that so many of the people I know wanted to laugh it off or think I was in the wrong to be upset (all of them male by the way) was disturbing and indicative of a larger problem- the societal norm of using derogatory names for women who dare to be successful, outspoken or self-celebratory, apparently those women need to be put down and put back “in their place.” Well guess what, OUR place is in the business world, in the art world, on the Oscar stage.
I am not going to apologize, ever, for being upset at The Onion (or more correctly, especially in light of the Onion’s apology, the twitter writer), or anyone else, using derogatory words meant to humiliate and belittle women regardless of age. But there are several people who need to apologize for wanting to pretend like it was “all in fun” or that it should have been laughed away. I am not laughing. I promise you Ms. Wallis’s family is not laughing. And those who understand the value of women as humans and not body parts are not laughing. It matters. It matters outside of the sphere of satire or humor. It matters in a very big way.
