College, chicks, feminism, issues
In my reading I come across plenty of things that are sound and commendable. Too many things that are mindlessly banal and/or just awful. Occasionally something that’s novel and thought-provoking. And then once in a while, I encounter something that can really be categorized only as “wha-huh?”
Such is the case with “Smart Girls Wear Short Skirts, Too,” posted by Amanda Marcotte at slate.com’s XX Factor blog. This, apparently, is a response to a NY Times item by Lisa Belkin in which, according to Marcotte, the author “conflates women having sex with men and actual social inequalities between college men and women” and generally bemoans female participation in juvenile sexual antics, or at any rate the nature of that participation.
Having read Belkin’s item at the Times, I generally agree with Marcotte’s criticisms. e.g.
To Belkin, the fact that women dance in their underwear at parties is part of the same pattern that caused a fraternity to circulate an email explaining that women aren’t actually people, as if women could get their people status back by putting more clothes on. But I think that men are perfectly capable of being turned on by a woman dancing in her underwear while never forgetting that said woman has a family that loves her, a mind of her own, and ambitions that are equal to his.
Quite. Nothing amiss, here; I consider myself a modern and committed feminist and believe in equal opportunity for men, women, and every other category of person to comport themselves how they like and still be treated like human beings. You shouldn’t be leered at or exploited just because you dress like a slut. Just as you shouldn’t be sniggered at or assumed to be somehow “repressed” or “incomplete” because you’re celibate, either. Go with yourself.
So naturally I’m neither troubled nor puzzled by Marcotte promoting a similar standard. Where she loses me is, instead, when she allows that “Belkin is quite right to be upset that men still exert total control over the college social scene, and that young women feel they have to suck up to men or they won’t have a social life at all.” Marcotte ends her post by revisiting this issue, in further but still-confounding detail:
I do think Belkin makes some interesting points about how unfair campus life is to women, who don’t get to share power over orchestrating campus social life. That women’s relationships with each other are eroded by competing for male attention is a problem, as is that men get to make all the decisions about what to do for fun and the women are just expected to tag along. But these problems are complicated, and solutions aren’t immediately evident. Plus, the solutions to them would require asking something of men, that they share power and treat women with respect.
What the fuck is she talking about, here? (more…)
