Wednesday, February 04, 2004
This rant needed a whole new post, so here it is
I will mention a quote I heard yesterday on NPR—in a piece about sexual assault by football players in college, and how some colleges recruit players with the promise of easy sex. And someone was bitching about this particular college's president, who happens to be a woman, and saying, "As a woman, she should be ashamed of herself for not doing more before now to curb this kind of behavior."
Excuse me, but why is her gender pertinent? Why shouldn't men be as culpable? Why don't you hear the über-feminists saying, "As a father to daughters" or "As a husband to a woman" about male college presidents and other male authority figures who presumably also haven't done anything about the problem of sexual assault of college women?
Why does having a penis make it sort-of OK for men not to be as concerned about women's sexual assault? Because they can't be victims of the same kind of sexual assault, it's okay that they are not as ferocious? And women who haven't been victims, or don't have a personal experience with sexual assault, are somehow less morally upright because they also haven't been as ferocious?
It's just absurd to me that sexual assault is still a "woman's" problem, rather than a societal one! These über-feminists are basically saying, "Men don't give a shit, but women should and when they don't, they disgrace their womanhood." Bullshit. They should be saying, "Every human being comes from a woman, so when men and women alike overlook or underestimate the problem of sexual assault, we all disgrace ourselves as human beings." Instead of saying, "As a woman, she should know better," I should have heard, "As an authority figure, and as a human being, she should have done more."
Excuse me, but why is her gender pertinent? Why shouldn't men be as culpable? Why don't you hear the über-feminists saying, "As a father to daughters" or "As a husband to a woman" about male college presidents and other male authority figures who presumably also haven't done anything about the problem of sexual assault of college women?
Why does having a penis make it sort-of OK for men not to be as concerned about women's sexual assault? Because they can't be victims of the same kind of sexual assault, it's okay that they are not as ferocious? And women who haven't been victims, or don't have a personal experience with sexual assault, are somehow less morally upright because they also haven't been as ferocious?
It's just absurd to me that sexual assault is still a "woman's" problem, rather than a societal one! These über-feminists are basically saying, "Men don't give a shit, but women should and when they don't, they disgrace their womanhood." Bullshit. They should be saying, "Every human being comes from a woman, so when men and women alike overlook or underestimate the problem of sexual assault, we all disgrace ourselves as human beings." Instead of saying, "As a woman, she should know better," I should have heard, "As an authority figure, and as a human being, she should have done more."
