It's Okay to Be a Raving Misogynist if the Woman's A Raging B*tch or Amber Heard

Or literally any woman you disagree with

Laquesha Bailey
7 min readMay 19, 2022

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/greg2600/, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I took a trip to Vancouver with a friend last week. While there, I learned two things. One, Vancouver is gorgeous, and its public library is the thing of dreams. It also rains…a lot.

One of those dreary rainy days coincided with the news that someone attacked infamous comedian Dave Chappelle on stage during a performance. I found this fascinating and shared the information (and the memes) with my friend. She found it amusing but admitted that she knew very little about Dave Chappelle outside of his reputation as a "huge transphobe."

Because the rain would prevent us from drawing any enjoyment from our stay that day, we stayed in and watched Dave Chappelle's latest special on Netflix, The Closer.

I had already seen it but endured a rewatch because I believe that any definitive declaration of someone's guilt of a phobia or an -ism should come from you and not from other people's opinions on Twitter.

Halfway through a bit about J. K. Rowling, she paused the TV, looked at me and said hesitantly, "You know, I strongly disagree with J. K. Rowling's opinions on just about everything, but I feel like a lot of the hate she receives is misogyny disguised as activism."

Perhaps emboldened by Chappelle's crassness, we began a lightning-fast round of "hot takes." We stayed awake until 3 AM, talking about everything from the intersection of whiteness and queerness, nuclear energy, the misogyny of gay men, colorism in minority communities, faux environmentalism, half-baked activism and dating as a queer person.

I forgot almost everything we spoke about after passing out, but only one thing remained clear as day. That goddamn J. K. Rowling comment. It reignited an inner moral battle I had been waging against myself for months.

Now, I'll be honest. I couldn't care less about J. K. Rowling or her opinions. Not even because of the content of her worldview. I'm sorry, I can't be assed if a rich person I've never met who has no personal impact on my life has a different opinion to me.

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Laquesha Bailey

4th-year undergrad | 3x Top Writer in Feminism and Social Media | I write about race, self and whatever else piques my interest | laqueshabailey15@gmail.com