falk@sun.uucp (Ed Falk) (09/19/86)
> Meanwhile, here at Reed there is considerable backlash against the > Reed feminists. One of them got offended at the appearance of > Playboy in a dorm social room and managed to antagonize most of the > dormies while telling them why they shouldn't read (or look at) > porn. The dormies retaliated by putting up pictures of naked men and > women all over the dorm, along with a sign that basically said > "If you don't like our taste in pictures, go away." The same Reed > feminist is now up in arms and threatening all kinds of actions > against the dorm (which she does NOT live in, by the way.) What > do you think about all this? Well, if she lived there, she'd have a legitimate complaint, but since she doesn't, it's none of her damn business what other people choose to read in their own homes. At the college I went to (RPI), there was a sorority that was the "feminist" sorority (is that an oxymoron?). It's members were always writing letters to the editor and protesting this or that thing that had happened on campus that had offended them. Then one hockey game (RPI Engineers vs. the somebodyorother Wildcats), some of the sisters from this sorority marched in front of the stands with a rather interesting pep-banner. It showed a drawing of a wildcat with a giant screw (the unofficial emblem of RPI is the 'Tute Screw') penetrating the wildcat from behind. The caption said "Go RPI! Screw the Wildcats, they're just a bunch of pussies anyway". That week, there was a letter to the editor telling this sorority what a bunch of hypocrites they were, and we never heard from them again. Another thing at RPI that tends to get the campus feminists pissed is the annual "blue movies" (soft-core porn) which are shown on campus (along with about 50 other events) during the end-of-the year party week. (There used to be a stripper at the end of the grand finale, but that got canned years ago). I'm no great fan of porn flicks (in nine years there I never went once), but I hate censorship more. One year my roomate, a lesbian feminist, wanted to organize a protest march against them. I said "Ummm, if I recall, you *went* to the movies last year and enjoyed them". She said "Oh. Right." and dropped the idea right there. RPI has (or had, I'm not sure) an affirmative action officer named Jeannete Hyphen-Comma-Something (she kept changing her last name in the attempt to find one that wasn't sexist (name changers take note: make your decision *before* you get married, it'll make things a lot less confusing all around)) who thought she was the campus edition of Andrea Dworkin. She was so adamant about shutting the blue movies down that she said she'd have the police raid the campus if they were shown. The president of the University had to intercede for the students. Another time, she ordered security to confiscate the campus humor magazine from all of the distribution sites because it was such a sexist issue. As this was in direct violation of the student bill of rights and the institute's policies, the dean of students stepped in and made them put it back. So she called security up and made them confiscate it again! I forget if they were finally distributed or not, but the end result was that she was unofficially chewed out and the humor magazine was permanently shut down. There was another humor magazine published unofficially by some other students off campus and sold by subscription. It was a pretty funny magazine, but one issue had a "news" article about one of the administrators having a "love child" (you'd have to know her to realize how unlikely that was). For that, Jeannette Hyphen-Comma-Something had the students put on disciplinary probation. Now remember, this was a completely independent magazine, totally unconnected to RPI; and she still did this to them. I think the administration finally got sick of her. Last I heard, she had been transferred to editing the school phone book. Anyway, aside from this one woman (who the students knew wasn't representative of feminism), the campus feminists were a pretty reasonable bunch -- constructive rather than confrontative -- and there was very little anti-feminist backlash on campus. On the other hand, one year there was an interesting anti-misogynist backlash. During the student election debates, someone asked one of the candidates why they should vote for him and he answered "because I'm not a woman". The result: women were elected as both the president and vice president *and* the presidents of the senior and junior classes. The ratio at RPI is 5:1, so the chances of that happening by itself is pretty slim. At the college my brother and sister went to, it was a different matter. The feminists there are *very* militant. One year, they took over the school newspaper and barricaded themselves in for a couple of weeks because they wanted a special section for women's news (the paper did have women's news, but it was integrated in with the rest of the paper; the feminists wanted it moved to it's own section). This whole deal did not make the campus feminists very popular. Another time, my brother went to a feminist lecture on campus, and all the men were told to sit in back and not ask any questions. My brother and his friend went up afterwards to ask why, and were told "Oh, go shove your penis up your ass". That put an end to my brother's interest in feminism right there. The backlash from all of this was pretty bad. My sister has some pretty strong feminist views, and the invective that got hurled at her was pretty disturbing. One time, she and her boyfriend went to a dance that was supposed to be casual dress, and found out that everybody was dressed semi-formal. This pissed them off, because it made them look sloppy in comparison so they went and got tuxedos and came back. Well, at UMass it's a big mistake for a woman to wear a tuxedo. Even though she was clearly there with a guy, she was yelled at, called a lesbian feminist and actually spat on. By women as well as by men. -- -ed falk, sun microsystems falk@sun.com sun!falk