Spring Break
OP-ED:Sexist remarks ignore female prowess
by Hannah Kirsch
Deputy Editor
Op-Ed | 4/17/07
Posted online at 11:07 PM EST on 4/16/07
/ Last updated at 8:36 PM EST on 4/16/07
According to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Alfred Lubrano, "in places like Brandeis University, young women are reporting that they're drinking more, and that they're confused and aching, referring to themselves as whores, saying they feel empty."
Lubrano, in his "Unconventional Wisdom" column, writes that girls today are perpetuating the "slut culture" in order to assert themselves. We young women apparently feel that sex with random men is empowering, and so contort ourselves to fit stereotypes of beauty and sexuality. We shoehorn ourselves into stiletto heels and dive headlong into the miasma of the inhibition-free party scene in order to attract men, all of whom are sexist pigs who would like nothing more than to use a woman and dump her three hours later.
Saying that Lubrano is mistaken about Brandeis is equivalent to saying that light travels rather quickly.
I do not deny there are schools where women feel they have to drink and "hook up" with men in order to feel accepted or fulfilled. But Brandeis University is not one of those schools. Our past two Student Union presidents have been women; next semester, another young woman will take over. Women are increasingly taking leading roles in social-action organizations and the scientific community.
What Lubrano refers to as "girls gone male"-young women taking power into their own hands, that is-manifests itself through "girls gone wild" in an intellectual sense rather than a sexual sense. Where did he obtain the supposed reports that Brandeis'''' young women are self-dubbed confused, aching, empty whores, when it is so clear to me that we are the exact opposite?
Furthermore, Brandeis University clearly encourages its women-and men, for that matter-to pursue the levels of sexuality with which they are comfortable. Free and confidential counseling, inexpensive contraceptives and other sexual products, seminars and discussion opportunities abound.
As a first-year, I received from my first week on campus advice on where to go for safe-sex products in the event that I did wish to have sex, and whom to speak to if I were confused about my sexual identity. Posters strewn over the walls of residence halls exhort students to have sober, healthy, consensual sex. Our University teaches us that sexual power is not fundamentally male and that women can sexually assert themselves without betraying their personal boundaries.
Lubrano, in his "Unconventional Wisdom" column, writes that girls today are perpetuating the "slut culture" in order to assert themselves. We young women apparently feel that sex with random men is empowering, and so contort ourselves to fit stereotypes of beauty and sexuality. We shoehorn ourselves into stiletto heels and dive headlong into the miasma of the inhibition-free party scene in order to attract men, all of whom are sexist pigs who would like nothing more than to use a woman and dump her three hours later.
Saying that Lubrano is mistaken about Brandeis is equivalent to saying that light travels rather quickly.
I do not deny there are schools where women feel they have to drink and "hook up" with men in order to feel accepted or fulfilled. But Brandeis University is not one of those schools. Our past two Student Union presidents have been women; next semester, another young woman will take over. Women are increasingly taking leading roles in social-action organizations and the scientific community.
What Lubrano refers to as "girls gone male"-young women taking power into their own hands, that is-manifests itself through "girls gone wild" in an intellectual sense rather than a sexual sense. Where did he obtain the supposed reports that Brandeis'''' young women are self-dubbed confused, aching, empty whores, when it is so clear to me that we are the exact opposite?
Furthermore, Brandeis University clearly encourages its women-and men, for that matter-to pursue the levels of sexuality with which they are comfortable. Free and confidential counseling, inexpensive contraceptives and other sexual products, seminars and discussion opportunities abound.
As a first-year, I received from my first week on campus advice on where to go for safe-sex products in the event that I did wish to have sex, and whom to speak to if I were confused about my sexual identity. Posters strewn over the walls of residence halls exhort students to have sober, healthy, consensual sex. Our University teaches us that sexual power is not fundamentally male and that women can sexually assert themselves without betraying their personal boundaries.
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