feminist1

It was totally offensive and unacceptable to even the most unpolitical, non-feminist wuss. �I like rape� written on someone�s door, directly across from the front door of my dorm and in a high traffic area between the mailboxes and the stairs. The recipient and the author were fellow freshman, friends of mine who are always joking about something. I wasn�t angry so much as I was surprised. I couldn�t believe that anyone, no matter how drunk, how conditioned to think of women as objects, or how willing to sacrifice all their principles in the name of a joke, would ever make rape to subject of their laughter.

I was on my way to do laundry. I dutifully loaded two washers and walked back up to my room to compose a note. I decided to leave it on the offending message board in when I descended to put my clothes in the dryer, but the door to the room was open when I walked by again. I didn�t want to confront the occupant because he hadn�t written the note, so I put my post-its in my pocket, hoping his door would be closed when I returned.

I was pulling someone else�s underwear and t-shirts out of the dryer when I heard footsteps on the stairs. It was the note�s author, heading towards the stove with a saucepan and ramen noodles. My stomach sank, leaden. Obviously I was going to have to talk to him. My first thought was, �I can�t talk to him when I look like this.� In my Sunday-night sweatpants, glasses, and zit cream, with my hair in a braid, I didn�t think I was attractive enough to challenge a peer who clearly, obviously, needed to be called on his actions.

I did talk to him, and he was polite, apologizing and offering the predictable excuse that the rape joke had been a response to some other joke that was certainly just totally hilarious to everyone who was around to witness it. I didn�t go Hothead Paisan on him, although I wanted to.

The whole thing made me think about my relationships with men and feminism. Coming out of a feminist household where my parents tried to steer us away from stereotypes and an all-girls high school that indoctrinated us with its own privileged brand of Dior-wearing, career-and-kids, get married and hire a nanny feminism, I�ve been wary about living and working in a coed environment. I don�t want to look like a �knee-jerk liberal� or a �knee jerk feminist,� so I find myself softening my arguments while backing them up with reams of credible evidence.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that feminism has a price � some dark, mysterious part of me thinks that you have to be pretty to get away with feminism. Some part of me wants approval from guys even though the only power they have over me, the only thing they have to give that I might want, is friendship. And mostly, I don�t even want that. So I�m continually surprised at the lengths I go to prove that I haven�t been brainwashed by feminism, when everyone around me has been brainwashed by patriarchy.

take me back!