By Maria DiPasquale, Staff Writer, Emerson College
Let me tell you a story.
In late May of my senior year, my friends and I finally decided to extend our constant dialogue about feminism outside of our friend group. Up until then, we’d admittedly been mainly talk and no action. From time to time, a couple of my friends would bring up the idea of writing a feminist zine. We always liked the idea. I’d even been planning once on collaborating with a friend on an “Ode to the Sacagawea Coin.” But nothing had ever come of it all.
I’d been seeing “I need feminism because…” campaigns all over the Internet and thought we could easily bring the idea to our school to start a dialogue about feminism. My friends immediately agreed. We finally started to turn our talk into action. I created a Facebook page, made my friends admins. We invited students and asked them to start posting about why they needed feminism. And they did. Students from my high school, across grades, classes, and friend groups, were finally sharing the same ideas my friends and I talked about on a daily basis.
As the page started picking up momentum, gaining likes, posts, and comments, my friends and I celebrated in our group chat. We were exhilarated, excited, surprised. In an admittedly corny moment, I typed to my friends, “Is this what revolution feels like?” While this was a dramatic statement, it does represent a very real feeling I like to call a “revolution high.” It describes that scattered, exhilarated high you get when you’re picking up speed and people are joining you and ideas are being shared and you finally feel like you’re making change.
But then, opposition.
In the moment of revolution, you forget that an opposition exists. You are on such a high from the idea that you’re making a fucking difference. And you manage to forget you’re part of a fight: a fight with two sides, with an opposing team that wants to see you lose. We all felt that feeling of deflation when the opposing comments started pouring in. Blinded by our high, we’d somehow forgotten it was coming. But it came: hatred for our cause, complaints about us stirring up trouble in this last month of our high school career.
We felt an odd combination of sad and angry. We started arguing about whether or not to delete comments that were unproductive and purely meant to make fun of us. Some of my friends started doubting whether they wanted to be involved with this anymore. This wasn’t what we’d wanted.
Let me tell you a story.
In late May of my senior year, my friends and I finally decided to extend our constant dialogue about feminism outside of our friend group. Up until then, we’d admittedly been mainly talk and no action. From time to time, a couple of my friends would bring up the idea of writing a feminist zine. We always liked the idea. I’d even been planning once on collaborating with a friend on an “Ode to the Sacagawea Coin.” But nothing had ever come of it all.
I’d been seeing “I need feminism because…” campaigns all over the Internet and thought we could easily bring the idea to our school to start a dialogue about feminism. My friends immediately agreed. We finally started to turn our talk into action. I created a Facebook page, made my friends admins. We invited students and asked them to start posting about why they needed feminism. And they did. Students from my high school, across grades, classes, and friend groups, were finally sharing the same ideas my friends and I talked about on a daily basis.
As the page started picking up momentum, gaining likes, posts, and comments, my friends and I celebrated in our group chat. We were exhilarated, excited, surprised. In an admittedly corny moment, I typed to my friends, “Is this what revolution feels like?” While this was a dramatic statement, it does represent a very real feeling I like to call a “revolution high.” It describes that scattered, exhilarated high you get when you’re picking up speed and people are joining you and ideas are being shared and you finally feel like you’re making change.
But then, opposition.
In the moment of revolution, you forget that an opposition exists. You are on such a high from the idea that you’re making a fucking difference. And you manage to forget you’re part of a fight: a fight with two sides, with an opposing team that wants to see you lose. We all felt that feeling of deflation when the opposing comments started pouring in. Blinded by our high, we’d somehow forgotten it was coming. But it came: hatred for our cause, complaints about us stirring up trouble in this last month of our high school career.
We felt an odd combination of sad and angry. We started arguing about whether or not to delete comments that were unproductive and purely meant to make fun of us. Some of my friends started doubting whether they wanted to be involved with this anymore. This wasn’t what we’d wanted.
This, I think, is a necessary feeling to overcome in being an activist. I think it can be even harder in this age in which Internet activism is a major part of every movement. When I went to walk in the Boston Feminists for Liberation March Against Rape and Gender Inequality in October 2012, a couple of men yelled back at us because my friend was holding a sign about ending heterosexism. The man didn’t understand the definition of heterosexism (discrimination against homosexuals based on the assumption that everyone is a heterosexual), and became offended. “Hey, what’s wrong with heterosexuals?” he barked at us aggressively. His clear anger did not make my stomach uneasy. We calmly explained what it meant and kept on walking. I was not scared or discouraged. Why would I be? I was standing in a large crowd of feminists, holding signs and marching and chanting together. I was on that revolution high, but I also wasn’t alone.
So much of the time that I feel that revolution high is when I’m alone, sitting behind my computer, publishing an article or sharing a petition with friends or spreading awareness for a campaign going on at Emerson. Whether or not we want to admit it, a lot of our activism is going to happen on the Internet now, and that’s just because we can post about activism on a daily basis. We can’t necessarily publicly demonstrate every day, so we use the Internet to fill in the gaps. With this comes the immediacy of our opposition. It leaves us alone to defend ourselves, alone to be shaken from our high by an opposing comment or an attack. And it’s different also because when we’re alone, the opposition doesn’t always just attack your cause. They have the chance to attack you, too.
But learning to be ready for this opposition is beneficial for us all. We all learn how to stand-alone. We learn where the holes in our knowledge are when we have to look something up to properly defend ourselves. We become confident in our ability to stand up to our opposition and defend our beliefs. We make it so that our high does not end when somebody stands up to fight us.
In the past year since my friends and I started that Facebook group, I have learned so much as a person and an activist. I am stronger now than I was then. I’m still learning, of course, because we never stop learning. I can still get disheartened by the Internet trolls. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, I came in defense of a friend who was being attacked on an Emerson Confessional post. I felt the old familiar pain in my chest when I was attacked. But I learned from it. I reflected and I remembered how much I’ve grown. I got myself back on the revolution high, and I kept on going.
Maria DiPasquale is a freshman Writing, Literature, & Publishing major and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Minor at Emerson College. She hails from a lovely, diverse, and liberal little town called Maplewood, New Jersey, a quick 30 minute train ride from New York City. As a result, a dialogue about race was ongoing throughout her childhood, shaping her current interest in equality. She is a feminist who aspires to write stories and novels that draw on equality issues. Her other interests include exploring cities, wandering around museums, buying more used boots than she could ever need, and making long lists of books she wants to read.
So much of the time that I feel that revolution high is when I’m alone, sitting behind my computer, publishing an article or sharing a petition with friends or spreading awareness for a campaign going on at Emerson. Whether or not we want to admit it, a lot of our activism is going to happen on the Internet now, and that’s just because we can post about activism on a daily basis. We can’t necessarily publicly demonstrate every day, so we use the Internet to fill in the gaps. With this comes the immediacy of our opposition. It leaves us alone to defend ourselves, alone to be shaken from our high by an opposing comment or an attack. And it’s different also because when we’re alone, the opposition doesn’t always just attack your cause. They have the chance to attack you, too.
But learning to be ready for this opposition is beneficial for us all. We all learn how to stand-alone. We learn where the holes in our knowledge are when we have to look something up to properly defend ourselves. We become confident in our ability to stand up to our opposition and defend our beliefs. We make it so that our high does not end when somebody stands up to fight us.
In the past year since my friends and I started that Facebook group, I have learned so much as a person and an activist. I am stronger now than I was then. I’m still learning, of course, because we never stop learning. I can still get disheartened by the Internet trolls. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, I came in defense of a friend who was being attacked on an Emerson Confessional post. I felt the old familiar pain in my chest when I was attacked. But I learned from it. I reflected and I remembered how much I’ve grown. I got myself back on the revolution high, and I kept on going.
Maria DiPasquale is a freshman Writing, Literature, & Publishing major and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Minor at Emerson College. She hails from a lovely, diverse, and liberal little town called Maplewood, New Jersey, a quick 30 minute train ride from New York City. As a result, a dialogue about race was ongoing throughout her childhood, shaping her current interest in equality. She is a feminist who aspires to write stories and novels that draw on equality issues. Her other interests include exploring cities, wandering around museums, buying more used boots than she could ever need, and making long lists of books she wants to read.