Letters to the Editor

Facing Our Complicity

Facing Our Complicity

Re: “Sign starts debate”

I admit, I might have given a chuckle to the “Dads: Winter isn’t the only thing coming” sign recently posted in the Ghetto when I was an undergrad. It’s a clever play on words on a popular meme and immediately graspable to any young person who has the Internet. I might have joined the choir against the clear persecution at the hands of people being “too PC” to get the joke. I might have pointed out, like so many others, that there was no intention to offend.

But these days, I found myself pausing at these moments. If a university education has done anything to my view of the world, it has problematized it. It has forced me to complicate the clearly obvious. It has made me introspective.

It has made me face a difficult truth: that intention is beside the point. That sexism, racism and other prejudices are so much more insidious in our times because the intention to offend is frequently absent. Here, we have a sign that was meant to be funny that says: “We are going to fuck your daughters.” The debate goes beyond PC squabbling when such a gendered declaration of domination is announced. We have to consider why it is that we must declare this to parents and warn women on campus of sexual conquest. Why we feel justified in telling women to be on alarm, to watch out “cause we’re out there,” and to expect sexual advances.

Sex is indeed a part of university life, but it shouldn’t pervade every aspect of it. It certainly should not be forced in front of a woman’s face so that she doesn’t forget it. When confronted with issues like this, we have to seriously consider the effect of such displays and confront the uncomfortable fact that we don’t always have to intend to do harm to actually cause it, and that leaving the debate at intention may make us complicit in what we openly proclaim we are against.

Thomas Simmons, ArtSci ’08

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