A Reality Check on Respecting Women: Three Incidents

A Word on Equality
At a party, three guys were giving one member of their group a hard time for disliking the taste of beer.  Typical college trend to make fun of the guy who chooses to consume fruity drinks.  The argument that drinking alcohol that actually tastes good is perfectly acceptable regardless of how “fruity” the drink is–that is for another time.  This quickly turned into a bit of a women’s issue instead.

I piped into their conversation in support of the heckled, telling him I supported his drink choices–for which he thanked me. One of his friends chimed in with, “Yeah, but your peers don’t support it!”

Excuse me?

I yelled out, “Your peers? Are we not peers?”

The boys chose to ignore me.  Instead, the girl next to me turned to me and said, “It’s because we’re women.”

Well, of course.  I am apparently not an equal at the drunken round table because of my gender.

Albeit a simple party quip, likely spewed by a man who was a few too many beers for the worse, it is this kind of simple comment that gives way to a much deeper problem–the problem that the fact that I have different body parts means that I have different rights, that my say is less important–or not important at all.  The fact that this guy chooses to drink beverages that are stereotypically the first choice of women makes him less of a man in their eyes.  One may be quick to accuse me of being “too sensitive” to a comment made in passing by a tipsy college student.  But I cannot ignore that it falls under the giant umbrella of opinion that being like a woman is insulting, and being like a man is cherished.

Downtown and Disorderly
One weekend, I was at a downtown bar with a friend who had had a little too much to drink.  After about an hour there, she stumbled outside and sat down, her head between her knees, ignoring the fact that she was wearing a mini skirt.  Minutes later, she vomited liberally in front of about twenty bystanders, mostly men.  Embarrassed on her behalf, we tried our best to get her to the car as fast as possible.  But there were some definite obstacles.  My friend did make a mess of herself that night–it happens to the best of us.  She did not deserve the looks and remarks she received from some of the men downtown that night.

You wanna know what vomiting girl is?  It’s disgusting–plain and simple.  It is not ‘hot;’ it is not ‘sexy;’ it is not something to scream ‘YEAAAAAAAH!’ about.  When you see a stumbling and sick drunk person, you should avert your eyes and keep moving, not jeer at her like you would a performing animal at the zoo.

That wasn’t the scariest part, though.

I looked into the eyes of many a passerby as we led her away from the bars.  There was something in the way those boys looked at her–something that I could not quite place.  It was a look comparable to that of a murderer before the kill.  Maybe that’s a little harsh.  But how exactly should I interpret a strange man staring at a drunk girl with a quiet smirk and a raised eyebrow?  How many times has rape been excused or hard to convict because the girl was drunk?  How many times have you heard men joke about how easy a catch is when she’s had a few, in the media and in real life?  If you’re a guy reading this and you’ve never thought this, even just once, I applaud you for not being part of the problem.

Rape Jokes Aren’t Funny, Dude
I received the rare opportunity to hang out with exclusively straight guys one evening.  We were partaking in the illustrious activity of watching funny YouTube videos while eating pizza.  We had been watching a few videos by The Whitest Kids You Know, many of which I found pretty hilarious.  Then one of the boys brought up their video, “The Grapist.”  I felt a twinge in my spine immediately but remained optimistic that this wasn’t going to be as bad as I imagined. Wrong.

In this video, a man is trying to pitch a grape drink commercial to a team of men who promote the product.  In the video, a man dressed as a bunch of grapes make several comments to two small children, using phrases like “I’m gonna grape you in the mouth!”  The video tries to make it funny by having the execs call him out on how similar it sounds to rape–but by the end, two out of three are in full support while the other is uncomfortable, but not enough to fight the majority vote, despite the actor in the video screaming “I’m gonna tie you to the radiator and grape you!” while the children run in fear.

The guys laughed and roared supportively.  None of them really noticed my clear discomfort or the fact that only laughed once or twice out of nervousness.  They quickly moved on to something else, and I chose not to bring it up.  I wholeheartedly regret that decision now.

This last incident was the one that really got to me, out of all the others.  These weren’t just guys at a party, or strangers on the street–they were my friends, one of whom I’ve known for almost two years.  This could be just another instance of my guy friends forgetting/ignoring the fact that I have lady parts (which believe me, happens).  Even so, rape jokes shouldn’t ever be funny, regardless of the presence of women.  Of course, men who joke about rape are not usually rapists.  But the things that these jokes usually purvey are defenses used by actual rapists, which quickly turn into quips that insensitive cops make, which therefore make rape a harder and harder crime to prosecute.  When you make a crime laughable, it falls in danger of becoming laughable in a real-life situation.

Isolated Incidents?
These three instances are not gross acts of violence–they are, like I said, instances.  But they are part of a bigger problem–the lack of quality and true ethical treatment of women.  I am not venturing that things aren’t better than they  used to be, before beating your wife was technically legal or before we were even allowed to vote.  However, when men still make comments and gestures like this–especially those who I can comfortably describe as “all-around decent guys”–it shows we still have a long way to go.  And men need to help us out a little bit by checking their privilege and realizing that these comments they make are not benign; they are what “I’m not racist, but…” is to racism, or “that’s so gay” is to homophobia.  They are unnecessary detours in the road to equality, to a place where women can feel safe.

Comments like these need to stop.  How can we gain equal rights when we’re not regarded as peers but subordinates based on our gender?  How can we feel safe when having a drink suddenly makes us a little easier in the eyes of men?  How can we move forward when we live in a society that tells us if we stumble, we had it coming anyway?