Of all the things of my life for which I could make me famous, I would never have imagined that it would be a dirty diaper.
I was the only person with a girl, and the only color person, in the first class section of an early flight in Montana to Texas when one of the flight attendees shouted me for throwing the dirty diaper of my daughterIn bath garbage.Not only scold me, but made me return to the bathroom and get it out of the garbage.When another assistant tried to defend me, he also shouted him.Humiliated, I ended up with the diaper at my feet during the rest of the flight.It is not exactly the first class experience that I expected on our first flight in more than a year due to the pandemic.
When we landed, I tweeted directly to the airline on the mortifying incident and made a personal promise not to travel with them or with any of their local partners again.I did not realize what would happen after this seemingly simple customer service complaint on social networks.
At the Houston hotel where I stayed with my husband and my daughter, I started receiving many calls to my cell phone from a 1-800 number that I identified with Google as an airline number.While combing me and made up for a family wedding that night, I managed to answer the third attempt by the person who called.A man identified himself as a representative of the airline and informed me that my family and I had been placed in a “prohibition list of travel” because I discarded a diaper in the plane's bathroom.When I challenged the person who called and tried to defend me and my family, he threw himself into a shocking and very personal diatribe.He started talking about how "you" bring "your children" everywhere.During a particularly vile part, he referred to my little daughter as "vaginal waste".
Nonaded by the vulgarity of a person who assumed that he was the assistant he had treated on the plane, I put the speaker so that my husband could hear what was happening.Finally we hang because the person who called did not stop harassing us verbally.My heart was beating hard, my brain was scrambled and my anger quickly became panic.If this person had access to my personal cell phone, what other information did you have access to?How far would I get to harass me and my family?
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I used social networks to try to obtain responses from the airlines involved after my husband waited and waited for someone from the airline's customer service telephone line to respond to his call.I contacted the police, both in Houston, where the incident occurred, and in Seattle, where we live, because I was afraid that the address of our house would have been compromised.
One of the publications I finally caught the attention of the airlines and someone of corporate damage control contacted me that night.But they did not give answers and did not offer solutions on how we could protect ourselves from their abusive and stalker employee.
I did not receive important resources or help from the airlines after this initial contact.My story finally went viral and overwhelmed the requests of the media that wanted to know more.Even after several emotionally exhausting rounds with journalists, he still had no responses from the responsible parties.To tell my story again every time I talked to a journalist made me relive the trauma again and again.And for what?Transmitting the "history of the dirty diaper" of my family only obtained a fleeting jet of attention on the Internet, along with racist and sexist comments.
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— Spider-Pack Sun Dec 06 18:36:23 +0000 2020
However, all this attention caused someone to claim the credit for the harassment call.A professional Internet provocateur who makes a living through YouTube humilling and harassing people, often at the request of their fans, said that everything was just a "joke".A joke.
Calling the conversation more full of hate and traumatic that I have had in my life a "joke" personifies the contempt that people of color faces every day in this country.All my life I have been forced to look the other way, to smile and laugh, when what I really wanted to do is scream when I listen to these types of comments;Microagrison that have repeatedly resonated in every corner of my personal and professional life: "Wow, love, tell me something: how do you speak so well English?";"No, I know you said you were born in Alabama, but where are you really?";"I'm tired of dealing with foreign doctors!""I'm sorry, it's hard to take the track to all of you".
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Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, I am as American as the others.All my education and medical training has been in the USA.UU., my paternal grandfather made his doctorate in California and my father spent much of his childhood in the United States.And yet, every day they remind me that I do not belong to this country because I am Morena.If not in the United States, where do I belong?
The viral nature of my story helped me find an army of followers who came out in my defense and that of my family;However, he also brought to light an online troll militia that set out to belittle me and my family.Women run a particular risk of being attacked and harassed by online trolls, and being a woman of color makes you a more vulnerable target.
Perhaps the most discouraging part of all this is that the airline and factual powers have not cooperated.They have refused to communicate what they are doing internally to investigate the original incident and have refused to reveal the name of the assistant involved.Something that is also frustrating is that nobody has been able to tell me, or even try to tell me, how the alleged joker obtained my number or how he falsified the call identifier of an airline.
Nuestras leyes aún tienen que ponerse al día con el mundo en línea actual de swatting (bromas a los servicios de emergencia),doxing (revelar información personal en línea) y acosadores a sueldo.And the lack of cooperation of the airline has resulted in a dead end for the forces of the order that cannot do anything for me or my family in the face of harassment and verbal aggression that we suffer from an alleged international joker.
Despite putting together a scandal, I literally have nothing to show in relation to my diaper crusade.What I have discovered in all this mess is that the victims of directed harassment have few resources, if they find any.This "joke" had consequences in the real world for me and my family: more than half a year after the initial incident and still affects me to change my little daughter's diaper in a public place.I feel vulnerable, waiting for someone to shout me.Every time I travel, I specifically ask flight attendees where they want the diaper to throw.Being brunette and traveling and taking flights as a mother with a little girl has always been difficult, but now it seems almost impossible.I have been afraid to travel by plane.
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I am a brunette woman, I am a mother and I am fed up, because nobody cares.But I will continue fighting the good battle, even if only for the hope that at some point in the future, people care;the hope that we will finally be able to stop fighting and being able to simply be.It's the least I can do for my daughter Morena and her future in this country she calls home.Someday we will be part.
Farah Naz Khan, MD is a medical and independent writer who lives in the Seattle area