OPINION: The time I drank bleach

Oftentimes, when politicians give strange suggestions or inappropriate jokes, people like to brush them off. “It’s just a joke” or “no one actually believes that” or “there’s no harm in a few words.” This is simply not true.

As soon as the presidential election results this year were called, many people felt free to voice opinions or make jokes they felt they couldn’t before. Some people started acting on the hurtful stereotypes and racist rhetoric winning politicians had previously joked about. Words matter, even more so with those in power.

Just a few hours following Election Day, people of color began receiving texts from unknown numbers telling them to report to a plantation as slaves. One text read,

“You have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation. Be ready at 1:00 pm SHARP with your belongings. Our Executive Slaves will come get you in a Brown Van, be prepared to be searched down once you’ve entered the plantation. You are in Plantation Group C. "

It doesn’t take an expert to know this is disgusting and inappropriate. Though likely meant as a joke or scare tactic, it simply shows the worst side of humanity. It is also very telling that these messages were sent out as soon as Donald Trump, a white man, defeated Kamala Harris, a Black woman, in the presidential election.

Immediately following Trump’s reelection, influential white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes promoted a new phrase that has become a rallying cry for misogynistic white boys in America: “Your body, my choice.”

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has been keeping track of the change in popular phrases online. Even before Election Day, ISD found a large increase in posts wanting to repeal the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. This rhetoric became even more popular with the reelection of Trump.

According to their research, between just Nov. 7 and Nov. 8, there was a 4,600% increase in the terms “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” on X. (Which, would you look at that, is owned by newly-appointed co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk.) Influential misogynists on X have posted statements such as “women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say” or “I saw a woman crossing the road today but I just kept my foot down. Right of way? You no longer have rights.”

Though I haven’t experienced any of this, I know firsthand what happens when those in power speak. Here’s the bleach story I know you’ve been waiting for.

When I was a junior in college, I studied abroad for a year. The first semester was in Spain, where I stayed with another student and a host family.

While my host mom spoke some English, the whole point of us being there was to learn Spanish, so that was primarily what we spoke. While there were a couple of signs early on that my host mom was a bit of a conspiracy theorist, we weren’t 100% sure due to the language barrier.

Spain is a very liberal country, still working to bring their country away from the terrible effects of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, who ruled until his death in 1975. My host mom was a huge fan of Franco, as well as Donald Trump. She took a lot of what both these men said to heart.

In April 2019, Trump made some unfortunate statements that implied the injection of bleach into a person would cure COVID. To be fair to him, in this instance, that’s not what he meant. However, when you’re in a position of power, anything you say can and will be taken as truth by far too many people, whether you said it correctly or not.

While no, my host mom did not sneak into our bedroom at night and inject bleach into my roommate’s and my bloodstreams, she decided having us ingest it would be just as good. It was about a week before we went home that we found out the reason for our constant stomach issues and why our host mom was so insistent we only drink her water, no one else’s.

Apparently, the whole time we’d been living there, she had been putting small amounts of bleach in the water we drank. No, it wasn’t cleaning bleach that comes in industrial-sized bottles, but the powder calcium hypochlorite. According to the CDC, ingesting this can cause severe corrosive injury to the mouth, throat, esophagus and stomach.

Long story short, we stuck it out for the final week, avoiding the water. We told the school the day before we left, basically saying we didn’t want to be involved in the repercussions but also didn’t want any other student to go through this as well. As my roommate and I boarded a train to the Madrid airport, we both blocked our host mom.

Though seemingly extreme, this is a personal example of how the words people say can cause real damage, both psychologically and physically. Remember that next time you brush off someone’s comment off as harmless.