Environment influences one’s thinking and experience. Experiences shape one’s identity. Society dictates certain ideals and expectations for each gender. And expectations and stereotypes confine us to set frames.
Hence the idea of gender roles and “masculinity” are illusions fostered and intensified after birth by society. Men “imprisoned by gender stereotypes” are made “fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success,” Emma Watson ’14 argued in her striking speech at the United Nations in September. She deplored feminism’s degeneration into such an unpopular and despised concept and invited men to join the cause because they too suffer from gender stereotypes — an advance that much echoes the thoughts of a 19th-century women’s rights suffragist, Susan B. Anthony: “Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”
One thing that really gnawed at me when I heard Watson’s speech was that it indicated that we are still stuck at the stage of “defining” gender equality and feminism. She urged men to participate in the cause. But I will not ask men to become feminists. It is indeed difficult for a man to share the feelings of a woman fully and to profoundly sympathize with a feminist view.
Then what are all the feminists doing out there, selfishly trying to salvage their own kind when, in fact, all are suffering, males and females alike? Doesn’t Watson’s self-contradictory statement nullify the very cause of feminism?
To all those anti-feminist men’s groups out there, the answer is a great big no. I sympathize with many male organizations in their attempts to eradicate prejudices and stereotypes against males, because it is true that we all suffer from prescribed gender roles. When that prejudice is transformed into discrimination and violence, however, it changes what is at stake for women. Gender discrimination and sexual assault are more active and violent forms of rights infringement than just stereotypes. That is why so many feminists — not just women but all those who care about their well-being — are raising their voices.
Sexual harassment, domestic violence, sex trafficking and slavery are not myths or make-believe stories but realities that are crushing the lives of numerous mothers, wives and daughters around the world. It is an undeniable fact that most of the victims are female. I myself come from a country still so tainted by the patriarchal conventions and antiquities of Neo-Confucian society — where sons are preferred and female offspring are not welcomed by their grandparents, where bitter anti-feminist men shout that all women should serve in the army just because it is unfair for them, and where a rapist who inflicted an indelible scar on an eight-year-old girl is released after 12 years, exactly when she turns twenty.
So when I first landed here, I could not witness any tangible signs of the gender inequality that I so often see and feel firsthand back home. But then I was struck by the news about university students sexually assaulted by peers on college campuses. The glass ceiling is much higher here than in Korea, but a university student being sexually harassed by another student is such a rare incident there. The fact that these unthinkable crimes are committed in such prestigious, elitist institutions as Ivy League schools is concerning.
Brown started admitting female students in 1971. Where are we now? Twenty-four years have passed since the controversial and monumental rape-list incident, triggered by several Brown students who survived sexual violence and who wanted to ignite change in the campus rape culture and the University’s sexual assault policies. How much have we improved?
The revelation of drinks spiked with date-rape drugs and an alleged sexual assault case, both of which are under investigation, has sparked heated debates and forums addressing the question, “How should colleges handle sexual assault?” Preventative measures and ex-post-facto treatment are crucial components of creating a safe community, but Brown seems to be facing criticism in both areas. Some students at open forums have raised concerns about the lack of sexual assault prevention programs and bystander training given to first-years and party attendees. More importantly, the University has failed to convince the students that it is putting its utmost effort into protecting and caring for victims while fully investigating alleged perpetrators.
“Universities in the United States rarely expel students for sexual assault,” wrote Toby Simon, a former dean in the Office of Student Life, in a 2011 CNN opinions column. Acknowledging perpetrators’ crimes, punishing them and publicly holding sexual assault awareness programs do not help fundraising efforts. After Lena Sclove ’16 was forced to relive her painful experience last year because the University had not taken appropriate measures to ensure her safety and let her alleged assailant back on campus, students have clearly lost trust in the University’s handling of these matters.
Perhaps most difficult and incomprehensible is the spine-chilling feeling of omnipresent threat and sexual violence that women on campus have to live with. Of course, there are certain aspects of “male” life that women cannot fully sympathize with, such as the social pressure and expectations of “manlihood.” And it is because of this that we are hopeful — because men are similarly suffering from gender stereotypes and distorted images — that they can at least try to understand our vantage point. If you believe in human rights, love your mother and wife, care about your daughter’s safety and wish your son to grow into a responsible individual, rather than a perpetrator that crushes others’ rights, you can easily be the “inadvertent feminist,” as Watson put it.
Julie HyeBin Shin ’17 can be reached at hye_bin_shin@brown.edu.
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