After Class, Skimpy Equality

Sorry, but my eyes glazed over as I read this. It's utter pabulum, the kind of sexual politics you'd expect from any second-tier college Gender Studies department. I flagged it because I don't think it's really all that interesting, nor do I believe it belongs on HN.

It's 2011. Women have earned the right to be who they want to be. The piece also ignores the fact that women easily outnumber men on the average college campus in the US. Women earn more doctorates and master's degrees than men today. But what this woman cannot get her head around is that men have the upper hand in the game of sexual brinkmanship. Sex is cheap, as has been discussed previously here on HN and elsewhere. Cheap sex means the value of it has been debased, and the power women could once wield over the sexual transaction is diminished:

http://www.slate.com/id/2286240/pagenum/all/#p2

Now, do I think it's insulting to ask women to dress up as hookers? Sure it is. I wasn't raised to treat women badly or with anything less than total respect. But these ladies have got to start taking some responsibility for their lot in life. For God's sake, go read some Camille Paglia! Women do everything that men do today, so revel in it. Stop complaining about how betrayed you are by the feminist movement.

> As parents around the country send their children to campuses for the start of another academic year, what are we to make of the fact that lessons of equality, respect and self-worth have been heard when it comes to the classroom, but lost somewhere on the way to the clubs?

Drivel. The feminist movement was about the liberty to live a life, any life, that a woman wants. If a woman wants to dress like a slutty nurse on Halloween, it certainly doesn't concern some snooty reporter.

I had a female student a few years ago who was complaining about the sexism of the themed parties at one fraternity (e.g. "red light", where the girls were supposed to dress as hookers, "pimps n hos", same story, ...). Knowing that she was in a sorority, I asked whether her sorority sisters shared her opinion---"more or less", she said.

Now, there were only a few sororities at this small school, and they collectively included close to 20% of the female student body (and a higher proportion of the party-going female students). So I suggested getting with the other sororities and boycotting any party with a sexist theme. Those parties would shut down SO FAST.

Her response was, "we've thought about that, but if we don't go to their parties, what else would we do?" There's a lot packed into that question. I didn't have an immediate answer then, and that whole conversation has stuck in my mind and comes to the fore whenever I read an article like this.

This isn't a problem that can be solved from above.

I graduated from Duke last year. I had moved all the way from Australia to attend the school (a great honor, I thought) and was pretty unprepared for the level of idiocy I encountered in the (largely frat dominated) social scene. Girls really are just objects of carnal fascination to many of these guys.

But humans today have changed very little physiologically in the last 50, 000 years. As a species I don't think we're 'wired' for inter-gender equality. It's a great ideal - but stepping out of the male-female inequality simply makes many girls uncomfortable. In these cases, why pursue it?

asymmetry != inequity