In James Baldwin’s novel “Giovanni’s Room,” a book I teach nearly every semester in my survey of American literature since 1865, a character named Jacques offers the narrator, David an important lesson: “There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain” (55). In the wake of several stories I have heard following the Presidential election, I want to urge all of us, as members of the Murray State community, to resist the temptation “to be contemptuous of other people’s pain” and to vehemently reject two especially sinister types of “despicable” behavior if we ever encounter them on our campus.

Two days after the election, a student told me about a worrying trend going viral online, one which, according to a recent report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, has already made its way into many communities and schools across the country. Inspired by an infamous white supremacist Internet troll named Nick Fuentes, young men across the country have begun replying to women’s social media posts, and even shouting at them in person, “Your body, my choice.” This vile repurposing of the pro-choice slogan “my body, my choice” explicitly revels in the re-election of a President who just one year ago was found liable by a jury of his peers for sexual abuse. Worse, it brazenly insists that men have a right to women’s bodies, perpetuating the consequence-free celebration of rape culture that characterizes the so-called “manosphere” which has scourged our increasingly deregulated social media landscape.

Let me say this as clearly as I can. Statements like “your body, my choice” must be treated as credible threats of sexual violence. If you hear someone say this, on campus or online, you should immediately use what you learned in your Title IX training about bystander intervention and threat reporting. This is not “ironic,” it is not “funny,” and it is not “political speech,” even if those making such statements claim the re-election of their felonious commander in chief as a license to air whatever misogynistic grievances they please. There must be no tolerance for sexual violence or intimidation in our community.

In addition to the misogynistic rape apologists who have come out of the woodwork since November 5, the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported a separate spate of racist harassment targeting African Americans, particularly on college campuses. According to NPR, numerous Black students have received anonymous texts telling them that, thanks to Trump’s reelection, they have been “selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation.” I don’t care who the President is or what kinds of reprehensible behavior he and his acolytes online might seem to condone: hate speech is hate speech, and it must be treated as such. Do not normalize it.

If you hear of this type of behavior happening on campus, you should report it, and you should make it abundantly clear that we will not tolerate it in our community. I, for one, refuse to make the slightest accommodation for the racism and misogyny that has been bubbling up in pockets across the country in recent days. I hope that everyone reading this will join me in reminding everyone here at the university we love that these despicable, contemptuous attitudes and actions will never be welcome.

Ray Horton

MSU English professor