By Geneva Rust-Orta

I was working part-time in a preschool one day, when I “asked” a 4-year-old to put their jacket on before going outside. I was really not trying to single this girl out. Every other child already had their jacket on. So, I was just trying to include this girl in the social situation at hand and maybe help her to be a little bit less of a freak.

However, she said no. I was not prepared for her to say no, since she was 4-years-old, and I am an adult. But she said no. I negotiated with her by saying, “Just wear it for five minutes and if you really hate wearing your jacket after five minutes, you can take it off.” She replied, “we don’t use that word in this class.”

I could feel my throat drop into my chest. I did not remember calling her the slut-word out loud. I thought that was something that had only happened in my head. I asked her, “what word?” She looked up at me with daggers in her eyes and said, “the hate word”, with such hatred in her voice that I really think her point was invalidated. I let her go outside without a jacket, which means that she won that battle. However, she caught a cold and subsequently got bronchitis, meaning that I won the war.

I have been feeling oppressed for weeks ever since this happened. I hate that she told me I cannot say the word hate. Hate is a genuine human emotion, and her telling me that I cannot say it really seems like she was shaming me. I know that hate is real because there is a word for it and that is how words work. There are many things that you cannot see, but you know must exist because there are words for them. Such as, soulmates, summer solstice, good-fart-jokes, brunch, and blue balls. These things might not seem real, but because there are words for them, they must be.

Hate is a human emotion, and therefore crucial to human survival. Otherwise, humans would not feel it because human beings are designed really, really well.

Way back in the day when we hunted for things, humans had to feel hatred because that was the only way that we’d be able to stalk, weaken, trash talk, and murder our food. Humans would have all died out if we did not resent bears and buffalos for walking around like big men on campus without ever acknowledging us or noticing our cave paintings of them.

Hate actually affects the human brain so much that it makes it impossible for us to laugh. This was very important back when we used to hide from ferocious beasts. Imagine if we had laughed with a predator nearby. Hate has protected the human race from approximately one million mammoth attacks alone. While we were busy thinking about rude comments on our cave walls, and other Neanderthals copying our loin cloth style, we did not laugh or speak to each other. This kept us safe and hidden.

Hate is human and therefore important. Of course, humans have evolved and so hate has evolved also. Hate used to encourage violence. This was really necessary back in the day when humans wanted to buy houses but there was no such thing as money. At that time, the only way to buy a house was to kill whoever was living in it. That is not acceptable behavior today, but it was necessary at the time. Modern hate is actually evolved to be safe and healthy.

There are a lot of ways that you can hate harmlessly. For example, if you hate someone you can spread a rumor about them. Rumors are harmless because they are not facts, so they don’t mean anything. But they can still make someone feel bad. Another thing you can do is wait until someone you hate is speaking to you, and then whisper quietly to someone else. Whispers are quiet and therefore totally fine. If the person you hate asks you what you are saying, tell them, “we are whispering, which means that it’s personal.” If they ask you to stop whispering, you can say, “actually we’re talking about something really important, and it’s personal” and continue. Another thing that you can do is throw rocks at their house. Throwing rocks at a house is actually fine, because houses are inanimate objects, so they don’t even feel it. You can throw rocks at objects because objects don’t feel anything.

Hating someone can be crucial to being happy. For example, if someone goes through a hardship or experiences a failure, you could be in danger of feeling pity or empathy for that person, which would suck. But if you actually hate that person, you will derive pleasure from their bad fortune and consequently feel happy instead of sad.

Hatred gets a bad reputation because of dumb adults and small children — all of whom are probably dumb. I’m basing this assumption about small children on that one girl who did not wear a jacket and then got bronchitis. If you actually look at the history and the facts, you will see that hatred helps us do the right thing. So, hate your jacket if you want to. Take it off, throw it on the ground, call it a waste of space and leave it there. Get a new jacket. Because you must have hated that other jacket for a reason.

After making this detailed argument, it might be necessary to tell you that the little girl who I told you got bronchitis, didn’t actually get bronchitis, or sick at all. She ended up being fine. However, I think that is beside the point since she could have gotten bronchitis, but instead got lucky. Therefore, her lack of sickness is irrelevant to the validity of my argument.

I hope this article has helped fight some of the stigma and prejudice against hate in our culture. And that eventually we will live in a world where we can all hate freely and shamelessly. When that time comes, I hope the little girl who told me that she would not put on her jacket has a really hard time with it.