Caution: This post is rated PG 13 and contains strong language and adult themes.
I was wrong. For pretty much my entire life I believed rather chauvinistically, that women were incapable of descending to the same levels of classless lowbrow behavior one typically associates with college fraternities, of which I have no personal experience, and drunken sailors, of which I do have some experience. The evidence of my error can be found in a recent news report, which I decline to name, quote, or link but which has made the rounds on the internet for those determined to find it.
It concerns a certain female student at Duke University who compiled (using power-point) a senior "thesis" on sex in college in which she recounts in graphic detail more than a dozen of her sexual "hook-ups" during her tenure at Duke. Not stopping there she named names and attached pictures of the alleged "subjects" of her 'study.' The icing on the cake is found in the conclusion of her report where she grades the young men (mostly college athletes) on such criteria as their performance, physical (cough cough) attributes, and other sultry details. Though she claims the whole thing was a joke it has been posted on the web and has gone viral.
One wonders what this young woman's father thinks, having likely coughed up in excess of $50,000 for her education only to discover that his daughter is a woman of easy virtue (I had another word in mind, which may yet appear) who has seen fit to advertise her numerous liaisons to the entire world. How proud he must be of the glass floor his daughter has shattered in her descent into the gutter.
It seems we live in an age where the internet has effectively replaced the bathroom wall and barracks room gossip I recall from my days in the Navy. But when considering the harm done to other people's reputations, even if she cares not for her own, this is shocking even by today's extremely low moral standards. Of course a very compelling point could be made that the young men who have been named to either their glory or humiliation brought this upon themselves. I have often lamented that English does not contain a male specific equivalent for "slut" (there's that word).
For my own part this reinforces a rather strongly held conviction that it is time to rethink the war waged so aggressively on single gender colleges and universities.
The 4th Century Science of St Macrina (I)
17 hours ago
2 comments:
While my small college was quite co-ed, we kept the quaint rule that genders were to be in different dorms. Most people who hear of this think it sounds hellish, but I was always ever so grateful for it! Not for any moral reasons, mind you, did I love knowing that women weren't allowed in my dorm (for, after all, if a couple wanted to hook up there were always options) but for the simple reason of peace in my undergraduate years. I never had half the drama that most men have in college and I was truly free to be my own person behind the doors of the dorm. People tend to only want to see the puritanical aspects of single-sex dorms, but I think they also forget the return of order it can bring. No socks on the door, no men having to put up a front, no worries about needing to use the bathroom in your robe, and almost zero incidents of sexual assault (men and women sleeping in different areas tends to cut down on that).
Well, that's my message for today.
Shame on them all!
I hate that pop culture has presented college as some kind of haven for debauchery and promiscuous sex. Freshmen come and go crazy over that kind of stuff, not just because of social pressures, but because they think that's the "college experience".
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