Being Spiteful for Fun and Activism | Vol. 4 / No. 4.5

Hello friends, and welcome to Feminist Saturday, also known as Elle-Didn’t-Have-Internet-or-a-Computer-for-a-Week-so-We-Couldn’t-Have-Feminist-Friday (though we did have a post about a hole that’s still being dug). This week, I’m going to be talking about something that I honestly don’t think that we appreciate enough: spite activism.

I tried to think of a cool portmanteau, but Spactivism and Spitivism just don’t sound right. Spite activism is basically the activism that happens not because (or not only because) you believe in the cause and have some sort of altruistic motivation, but because fuck that guy, amirite? You see this in fundraisers that have a specific personal humiliation as its end result, like when principals offer to shave their heads if students raise a certain amount of money or people who get a pie in the face for charity. It’s at least part of the motivation behind things like the Ice Bucket Challenge. Yes, we wanted to help people with ALS. But also, we wanted to see all those celebrities make funny faces when they were hit by freezing cold water. Because activism just tastes sweeter when it makes celebrities curse. Or makes Tom Hiddleston’s shirt stick to his abs. Or, y’know, both.

Yet all of these forms of spite activism pale in comparison to what is truly the best, and purest form of spite activism: donating money to causes in the name of people who detest those causes. And that brings us to the Future Vice President Who Looks Most Like He is About to Introduce Legislation to Outlaw the X-Men, Mike Pence. And the more than 50,000 letters he is about to receive from Planned Parenthood thanking him for his “donations.”

The major reason I don’t actually want Donald Trump to be impeached comes down to two simple words: Mike Pence. Yes, Donald Trump is evil. He’s a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, lying, stealing, cheating pile of carrot shavings dusted lightly with cotton candy that has been spray painted gold. He has smaller hands than you’d expect for a man of his stature. And he’s super self-conscious about his double chin. But Mike Pence is all of those things except for the last three, and to top it off, he has two things that make him much more terrible than Trump: he is competent in his evil, and he believes everything he says. He hated Planned Parenthood before it was cool, and he was directly responsible for legislation that led to Purvi Patel’s arrest and conviction for “feticide” for pursuing an abortion. He wants to see Roe v. Wade be put on the ‘“ash heap of history, where it belongs.”’

Let that sink in. He thinks that a woman’s right to control her own body belongs in the same place we put things like miscegenation laws.  So in short…. Fuck that guy, amirite?

Enter the glorious, glorious spiteful activism. In the wake of Trump’s election, Planned Parenthood has already received over 200,000 donations from people who think that women deserve access to abortion and health care. (It’s like we’re… people…. or something…) A full quarter of those donations have been in Mike Pence’s name. And because Planned Parenthood always listens to Miss Emily Post, they’re going to politely send Mike Pence a thank-you note for Every. Single. One. He’s going to receive fifty thousand thank-yous from the organization that he has been trying to shut down since 2011. He’s going to know that his utter contempt for women has inspired fifty thousand people to donate to the organization he hates the most. Some poor intern of his is going to have to sort through fifty thousand pieces of mail from people who are doing their best to enshrine a woman’s right to choose. That warm, fuzzy feeling you’ve got right now? That one that’s a mix of “aw, yeah!” and Emperor Palpatine going “good, good”?  That is the special glow that you get from spite activism.

If you want that special glow to continue, please feel free to donate to Planned Parenthood (or other abortion providers in your state who might not be feeling as much love because they aren’t as famous) and give the following information:

Office of Governor Mike Pence
State House Room 206
Indianapolis, IN 46204-2797

Let the hate (and altruism) flow through you.

***