A

ll throughout elementary 
and middle school, I was 
taught the value of equality 

was of utmost 
importance. 
My classmates 
and 
I 
were 

taught 
that 

we must “treat everyone the way 
that we would like to be treated,” 
the Dr. Seuss mantra “a person’s 
a person, no matter how small” 
and the prevalent belief that “we 
are all one.” In my opinion, this 
is good advice to give young kids. 
Informing children that all people 
deserve respect — no matter how 
different they appear to be from 
you — attempts to teach them not 
to stereotype one another. But as I 
matured into an adult, the morals 
and values that I was taught didn’t 
mature along with me, and these 
“we are all one” morals often 
remained in my mind, as the simple 
and limited way they were taught 
by my kindergarten teacher. 

The horrific Orlando shootings 

that occurred this past June 
during Pride Month were followed 
a few weeks later by the Twitter 
hashtag 
#HeterosexualPrideDay. 

Created in an effort to celebrate 
heterosexuality, 
Heterosexual 

Pride Day was disrespectful to 
those who have been discriminated 
against based on their sexual 
orientation and was also incredibly 
useless, 
as 
heterosexuality, 
as 

least in America, has never been 
something one couldn’t be proud 
of. In the same vein, movements 
like All Lives Matter and Men’s 
Rights Activism are all created out 
of a false understanding of what 

ostracism actually is. But, many 
argue, “If we are ‘all one,’ then 
why can’t I as a cis/abled/straight/
white/Christian/man celebrate my 
identities?” Indeed, why is pride 
in privileged identities so looked 
down upon?

Those who decide to take pride 

in privileged identities seem to 
have a basic misunderstanding of 
what pride is and why it exists. 
Perhaps for someone from a 
privileged identity, pride appears 
to be exclusive and clique-y, a 
movement meant to exclude others 
who don’t share the said identity. 
But this ignores how, for those 
whose identities make them a 
target, celebrating these identities 
is, in itself, a rebellion. For those 
who identify as LGBTQ, taking 
part in the events during Pride 
Month means finally being able to 
celebrate an identity that has most 
likely put them at risk of bullying, 
harassment and even losing their 
jobs or housing. The same goes 
for taking part in pro-Black, pro-
Muslim, or any pro-movement of 
a minimized identity. The reason 
these holidays and movements exist 
at all is in response to the prevalent 
beliefs that seek to destroy them. 
These holidays and movements 
weren’t created to exclude anyone 
else — they were created so that 
these identities could continue to 
exist.

Privilege is hard to confront, 

I understand. As Americans, we 
are all taught that success comes 
to those who work hard and try 
their best. So, if you live a life that 
is relatively easy, it is comforting 
to think that this is the result of 

you or your ancestors’ hard work, 
and that a painless lifestyle is your 
reward. It’s hard to confront the 
fact that everything you have, that 
everything your family has, could 
also be the result of luck as well as 
a strong will and determination. 
Sometimes it is hard for us to 
confront our privilege because of 
the struggles that we have faced 
in our lifetimes — if someone has 
grown up impoverished, it may 
be hard for them to realize they 
might have a type of privilege that, 
nevertheless, makes life easier for 
them than it would be for someone 
else. I understand and I sympathize, 
but we have to do better.

Many of us have been taught 

that “a person’s a person, no matter 
how small,” and “we are all the 
same,” but this basic understanding 
of humanity often offers us a 
distorted view of how the world 
actually works. If we are to assume 
that “we are all the same,” it is 
difficult for the privileged to accept 
that someone may be experiencing 
life in a different, harder way. It is, 
perhaps, this lack of understanding 
that may lead some to believe that, if 
a few identities are allowed to have 
their own history months or Pride 
Month, they are also deserving 
of this kind of treatment. Those 
with privilege need to realize that 
our identities — which we never 
have to think or worry about — do 
not need to be celebrated and do 
not need to be honored. We need 
to stop assuming that everyone’s 
experience has been the same.

—Elena Hubbell can be reached 

at elepearl@umich.edu. 

4

Thursday, July 7, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

LARA MOEHLMAN

EDITOR IN CHIEF

JEREMY KAPLAN

EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

BRADLEY WHIPPLE

MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at 

the University of Michigan since 1890.

Moving beyond “we are one”

ELENA 
HUBBELL

INTERESTED IN CAMPUS ISSUES? 

Every Tuesday at 7 pm, the Daily’s opinion staff meets to discuss both University and national affairs and write 

editorials. E-mail opinioneditors@michigandaily.com to join in the conversation. 

MADELINE 
NOWICKI

Learning from Twitter
F

eminism 
is 
a 
complex 

issue that fundamentally 
deals with dynamics and 

relationships 
between 
women, 
men, 

society, 
race, 

class, politics, 
sexual orientation, gender identity, 
ability and a whole host of other 
large, abstract ideas. Feminism 
is far from new, but since around 
2014, “culture (has) become a 
feminist issue.” That was the year 
of Beyoncé’s iconic 2014 Video 
Music Awards performance. The 
Internet, 
especially 
Twitter, 

exploded 
with 
activity 
and 

excitement following Queen Bey’s 
display of empowerment.

Apart 
from 
Beyoncé’s 

performance, 
we’ve 
seen 
UN 

Women’s 
2014 
social 
media 

campaign 
#HeForShe, 
which 

encouraged men to take up the 
issue of gender parity and state 
their position as allies for women. 
We saw #YesAllWomen arise 
in 2014 to uncover the issues of 
daily 
oppression. 
We’ve 
seen 

#EqualPayDay in 2016 discuss 
the gendered wage gap. We saw 
#CarryThatWeight 
arise 
in 

2014 in response to the epidemic 
of mishandled campus sexual 
assaults. We’ve seen the disgusted 
response to the abysmally lax June 
sentencing of a violent rapist who 
attended Stanford.

Everyone 
on 
Twitter 
gets 

140 
characters 
to 
declare 

whatever they want, virtually 
uncensored. All you need to 
participate is Internet access. 
The issues discussed on Twitter, 
however, 
often 
reflect 
those 

important to privileged feminists. 
Problems 
faced 
by 
educated, 

middle- or upper-class, straight, 
white women often gain more 
attention 
than 
the 
issues 
of 

less wealthy women, women of 
color, transgender women, non-
heterosexual women, etc. The 
mainstream dialogue on Twitter, 
consolidated in its trending topics, 
doesn’t always necessarily embody 
intersectionality, 
especially 

the issues of women who share 
membership in other minority or 

oppressed groups.

This is especially concerning 

because 
Twitter 
trends 
are 

designed at their core to inform the 
user base about important topics 
by broadening their horizons to 
see what others are discussing. If 
trends are biased, as they so often 
are, towards the privileged, then a 
cycle of focusing only on the issues 
discussed by certain powerful 
groups of people will perpetuate. 
And this will occur despite the 
strong communities speaking out 
on alternative and more honest 
realities. But social media can 
work against this honesty by 
inducing a groupthink, tunnel-
vision mentality. Sifting through 
users to find diverse content is 
definitely 
possible. 
However, 

this is simply another barrier to 
an otherwise open, equalizing 
platform for free speech and 
understanding. Younger people 
are the demographic of social 
media sites, and if they are 
exposed only to one wave of 
feminist discourse because of 
these barriers, they will face 
the often invisible problem of 
ignorance.

Twitter is simply the starting 

point. It allows me to listen to 
women speaking directly and 
honestly about their lives, and I 
am grateful that it had a role in 
changing me from a relatively 
uninformed girl into someone 
who can learn from women 
experiencing life differently than 
I do. It is exciting to participate 
in #Hashtag Feminism, but it is 
important to not become simply 
a product of a fledgling wave of 
feminism, one that developed out 
of hashtags and campaigns, one 
that is wide-reaching and with the 
potential for an engaging and well-
rounded discourse but still falls 
short in terms of representation. 
If your goal is to learn from social 
media, it is important to follow 
people who do not share all of your 
experiences. It is important to not 
only embrace but also actively 
seek intersectionality.

—Madeline Nowicki can be 

reached at nowickim@umich.edu.

