I didn’t like Harambe and I’m glad he’s dead. Animals are dumb, and gorillas are certainly no exception. His life was less valuable than that of the little boy he tried to murder, and his current status as an Internet meme is much preferable to his previous status as a living, breathing creature taking up valuable real estate on my planet.
Now I have a whole new reason to hate Harambe: He’s a racist and he makes men want to commit rape.
Annabel Scott reports on the latest from Clemson University:
Resident Advisors at the university have recently been instructed to have all students remove any reference of Harambe from their dorm windows and hallways. In an email to RAs, a Clemson administrator claims the memes of the late gorilla not only “add to rape culture” but can also be “a form of racism…”
“If residents are asking why they have to take them down you can share that there was a report from an individual about a meme being offensive and bias (sic) in nature and as a result all Harambe references are no longer allowed within our community,” writes another RA in an email to students.
Someone was offended. People don’t like being offended.
Katherine Timpf at NRO speculates that Clemson’s swift and decisive action is related to the following meme, which has proliferated across the Internet in the wake of the gorilla’s fortunate demise.
WARNING: Adult language and nonsensical Internet humor
It seems likely that somebody posted “Dicks Out for Harambe” somewhere on the Clemson campus, and it triggered a sensitive student.
I applaud Clemson’s swift and decisive response to this hate speech. Why should one student be able to post a meaningless Internet meme if it might trigger another student? How does that foster a productive learning environment?
Here in America, people sometimes say things that hurt other people’s feelings. That’s why the Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states: “Thou shalt not say stuff that’s mean, because that’s really problematic, trigger warning safe space let’s all jump in the ball pit.”
Clemson did the right thing. If you disagree, I’ll thank you to keep your mansplaining to yourself. But thank you for not manterrupting. Everything that every man does is bad, because they’re men.
P.S. Now Clemson is backing down. This is an outrage.